


Walk Alone

by OfEndlessWonder



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Flashbacks, and then when we get to endgame it becomes a fix-it fic, because natasha romanoff deserved better, except for the parts i don't like, mostly canon-compliant, so ignores certain parts of aou, with a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24027469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfEndlessWonder/pseuds/OfEndlessWonder
Summary: A series of moments in Natasha's life, exploring her relationship with Maria, and how they find their way back to one another after the events of infinity war.
Relationships: Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 42
Kudos: 353





	Walk Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I spent my first three weeks in lockdown watching all the mcu movies, and fell completely head over heels in love with this pairing and have been working on this fic ever since. It became a /lot/ longer than I ever expected it to, but I think it works best as a massive one-shot so I'm just dumping it all here for you guys to read instead of splitting it up into chapters. 
> 
> It alternates between the 'present' which takes place immediately after the end of infinity war and then moves through endgame and beyond, and the 'past' which is a series of flashbacks exploring the development of Natasha and Maria's relationship. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! Feel free to come talk to me on tumblr (ofendlesswonder).

_But I think our lifelines became too intertwined,  
And now we’ve paid the price  
  
_

* * *

It’s hours before Natasha can check her phone.

They have to assess the damage, work out how many they’d lost (god, so many, and it turns her stomach each time a new name is added to the ever-growing list), and tend to the injures of the living before she gets a moment to herself.

She steps to the side in Shuri’s lab, pulling her phone out of her pocket and trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach when she sees that she has no missed calls. Her fingers shake as she opens her contacts, and she presses her thumb to the name ‘Maria Hill’ and prays to a god she doesn’t believe in that someone picks it up.

It rings and rings and rings, and Natasha pushes down a wave of panic, tells herself that there could be any number of reasons why Maria might not be able to answer the phone.

Maybe she’s busy doing damage control, or she’s in an underground bunker somewhere with no signal, or she’s lost her phone, or, god forbid, she’s injured and can’t quite manage to reach it.

Any of those would be better than the alternative, than her turning to dust and fading away in the wind, than Natasha never seeing her again.

She tries Fury, next, because she knows that Maria is never far from his side, but that goes straight to answerphone, too, and she swears under her breath and punches the wall she’s leaning against, bloodying her freshly cleaned knuckles.

Then she tries Clint, and nearly sobs with relief when this time, the call connects.

“Tasha?” He sounds panicked, and Natasha doesn’t blame him. “Tasha, what the hell is happening? I was… I was with Laura and the kids, and I blinked and now they’re… they’ve disappeared, and the news is saying… well, I don’t know what it’s saying, but it’s nothing good.”

“We… we lost.” Natasha’s throat is tight, her heart beating too fast in her chest, and she’s never had a panic attack before but she feels like this might be what one feels like, takes a calming breath and clenches her hand into a fist, letting the sting of the broken skin ground her.

“They’re gone?” His voice cracks, and Natasha’s heart aches, and the only reason she isn’t falling apart is because she doesn’t know for sure if Maria is among the fallen.

“I’m so sorry, Clint.”

***

The first time she sees Maria Hill (though it’s weeks before she learns her name), Natasha is being led onto the Helicarrier by Clint Barton, her hands bound behind her back. She could break the restraints, easily, but she’s playing along, seeing what they’re going to offer her, because she knows that Clint would have put an arrow through her skull if they wanted her dead.

She’s led past a string of agents, all silently observing her, but none of them meet Natasha’s eyes when she turns her best glare on them. That is, until she meets the gaze of a tall brunette, her hands clasped in-front of her, face neutral, and she doesn’t look away under Natasha’s withering stare, just tilts her jaw and stares straight back, unblinking, until Natasha’s pushed through a door.

It takes a few weeks for SHIELD to break her programming, but once they do, Natasha is free to roam the Helicarrier.

She keeps to herself, for the most part, spending her time either in her room or the training room. She only visits it at night, when the other agents are sleeping, likes being the only one in there, and when one night she hears the sound of fists hitting leather within, she almost turns on her heel and stalks away.

But she’s been restless all day, looking forward to the opportunity to stretch her muscles, to expend the energy that being up in the air fills her with, so she sighs and strides through the door anyway.

Natasha’s interest is piqued when she realizes that it’s the brunette agent who hadn’t been afraid to meet her gaze that’s pummeling one of the punching bags attached the ceiling. Her skin glistens with sweat, and Natasha tries not to stare as she slips past her, tries not to watch the way the muscles of her arms ripple with every hit.

She wonders what has lured the other woman out of bed, what demons had chased her to train at half four in the morning, doubts that they’re the same as hers, her victims faces playing behind her eyes whenever she closes them.

Natasha ignores the other agent, and is ignored in return, settles into her usual routine and smiles when she feels the burn of her muscles. It doesn’t bring her the same satisfaction as usual, though, and what she aches for is a challenge, is a sparring match, is squaring up to an opponent and anticipating their every move, and she turns her gaze towards the other woman, pursing her lips as she watches her.

“Didn’t they teach you that it’s rude to stare in spy school?” The voice is low, dry, a pair of blue eyes meeting Natasha’s as the other woman pauses, chest heaving with exertion, though she doesn’t sound out of breath.

“I wouldn’t call the Red Room spy school,” Natasha replies, folding her arms across her chest, and she notices a name printed on the other woman’s shirt, squints and makes out the word ‘Hill’ written in neat black letters. “Wanna see how you fare against an opponent that can hit you back?” Natasha nods towards the much-abused punching bag and quirks up an eyebrow.

Hill considers her for one long moment before she shrugs. “Sure.”

Natasha smirks before ducking into the boxing ring behind her, Hill following a moment later. She looks young, and Natasha suspects she’s a relatively new recruit, although the way she’d been throwing out kicks and punches before spoke to extensive training.

Military, Natasha decides, as the other woman squares up against her. It’s in the way she holds herself, the way she looks at Natasha with laser-focus, ready to anticipate her every move – not to mention the fact that she’s still wearing her SHIELD uniform to work out in, and the fact that not a single strand of hair has escaped the bun pinned at the back of her head speaks to a wealth of experience keeping it at bay.

Military trained or not, Natasha doesn’t expect her to be much of a challenge. Natasha has always excelled when it came to her training, pushing herself to be the best that she can possibly be, and she’s taken down hundreds of foes both bigger and stronger than her with nothing more than her bare hands.

Hill lasts longer than Natasha expects her to, dodging a few of Natasha’s earlier blows, and even manages to land a few of her own. She’s fast, strong – but Natasha is quicker, and she’s the one who prevails, pinning the other woman down onto the mat with ease, her thighs bracketing her hips and her hands pinning down her wrists.

“Not bad,” Natasha says as she jumps to her feet, and she extends a hand towards the other woman to help her up. “Some room for improvement, though.”

That earns her a glare, and Natasha grins.

“I’m Natasha, by the way. Romanoff.”

“I know who you are.” Hill reaches for her towel, wiping some of the sweat from her brow and looking annoyed that she’s been beaten. “You’re kind of a big deal around here. Former assassin turned SHIELD agent.” Hill looks at Natasha like she’s trying to figure her out, but Natasha knows she won’t succeed – many have tried and failed before her.

“You got a first name, Hill?”

“Yes.” She doesn’t offer it, though, as she slips out of the ring, leaving Natasha blinking after her – it isn’t often she’s caught off-guard, is used to people falling at her feet, giving her whatever she wants, and she finds herself intrigued as she watches Hill walk away.

“We should do this again, sometime,” Natasha calls after her, and Hill pauses, halfway to the door. “See if you can last a little longer next time.”

Hill flips her off, and Natasha laughs as she carries on with her usual workout, a new mission on her mind – find out Hill’s first name.

***

It’s three days before she finds out for sure that Maria is one of Thanos’ victims.

She hunts down the security footage from a building on the road where Maria was last seen, needing to see it for herself, needing the closure, and when she sees the lost look on Maria’s face before she fades away, Natasha’s eyes blur with tears.

She throws herself into tracking down Thanos, because at least if she has something to concentrate on then she can’t allow herself to fall apart. She will avenge Maria’s death and then she will shatter, and she doesn’t know how she can possibly put together the pieces of her broken heart, because it’s never been broken before, but she knows she’ll figure it out, she’ll carry on, because that’s what Maria would want her to do.

Natasha had never meant to fall in love with her.

She doesn’t even know when it happened – whether it was slowly, creeping up over time, or if it was all at once in a heady rush – but there had come a point where she couldn’t imagine a world without Maria in it, and now…

Now she has to live in one.

“We’ll find him, Nat.” Steve comes up to her as she’s staring at what few pieces of intel they’ve managed to gather on Thanos in the past few days, his hand resting on her shoulder. “You should get some rest.”

“I can’t.” She closes her eyes and she sees Maria, and Natasha had never found sleep easily, snatched it in bits and pieces between missions, never needing more than a few hours, but with Maria’s arm around her waist she’d always slept soundly through the night, and now she wondered if she ever would again.

“You’re not going to be any good to anybody if you burn yourself out,” Steve points out, voice as reasonable as ever as he settles into the seat opposite her.

“And when exactly are you resting, Rogers?” Natasha asks, kicking her feet up onto the table and leaning back in her chair.

“I don’t need so much.”

“Yeah, well, neither do I.” Natasha is nothing if not stubborn, and Steve seems to think better of pushing her. “How can there have been no sign of him?” She slams a hand down on the table, sick of being filled with nothing but pain and desperation and frustration at their lack of progress. “He can’t have just disappeared.”

“It’s a big place out there,” Steve sighs, running a hand over his face. “But we _will_ find him, and we’re going to get everyone back.”

Natasha doesn’t know how to share Steve’s brand of sunny optimism, so she stays silent, although she prays that he’s right, that this time, they’ll prevail, and she’ll be able to wrap Maria in her arms once more.

She snakes a hand inside her shirt, closes her fingers around the dog tags that rest against her heart – she’d broken into Maria’s apartment a few days ago, taken some things to remember her by, and when she’d seen the tags she hadn’t hesitated as she’d slipped the chain around her neck.

“Nat, are you… are you okay?” Steve asks the question hesitantly, looking at her with concern in his big blue eyes, and Natasha’s laugh is bitter.

“Are _any_ of us okay?”

“You know what I mean.” He sees too much, does Steve, his eyes shrewd as they look at the silver chain around her neck. “I know what it’s like, to lose someone. You were there for me after Peggy’s funeral, and I… I just want you to know that I’m here for you, too.”

Steve is on the very short list of people who knew about Natasha and Maria’s relationship – an even shorter list, after the Snap – but that doesn’t mean that Natasha’s ever opened up to him about it. She’s nothing if not private, and she doesn’t even know how to _begin_ putting in to words the anguish that’s settled in her chest, that robs her of a little of her oxygen with every breath that she takes.

“I know,” she says, her eyes fixed on her hands. “But I… I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know how.” She looks up, meets his gaze, and knows he won’t push her but he’ll be there when she’s ready. “You really think we’ll get them back?” She asks, desperate to change the subject, because she doesn’t want to break down in-front of him, has only barely been able to hold herself together in-front of the others the past few days.

“Yeah,” Steve says, jaw set as he nods. “We will.”

***

After that first time, Natasha keeps finding Hill in the training room, and they start sparring on the regular.

Natasha calls Hill Maria because she knows it annoys her, because she likes the way it makes her tense her jaw, anger coloring her neck a lovely shade of pink, and she hits a little harder, lets her frustration get the best of her.

They don’t talk outside of trading pointed barbs, and Natasha thinks that that suits the both of them just fine. She’s read Hill’s file, knows her background – she was right about the military, and about her being a junior agent, although Natasha wouldn’t be surprised if Hill rose up the ranks relatively quickly (not that she’d ever say that to Hill’s face) – and she learns more about her the more time they spend together.

She learns that, when she’s woken up by a nightmare, Maria is already worn out and slick with sweat by the time Natasha joins her, the echo of her past still shining in her eyes when they square up to one another on the mat.

She learns that Maria is an adept fighter, quickly adapting to Natasha’s style, learning her moves and starting to anticipate them, and each time they spar she lasts a little longer.

Maria doesn’t like losing, is willing to fight a little dirty, pushes herself hard even when she’s hurting, and she shivers whenever Natasha presses the full weight of her body against her.

Her pulse flutters whenever Natasha pins her wrists, and she swallows hard whenever Natasha brushes up against her – usually deliberately, because she likes the way that the unflappable Maria Hill (Natasha has seen her outside of their sessions, stalking around the Helicarrier, stoic and severe and keeping to herself) flushes and can’t quite meet Natasha’s gaze.

Natasha is used to people wanting her, but she’s not used to them pretending they don’t.

Even more unusually, Natasha finds herself wanting _back_.

It’s a foreign feeling, because Natasha isn’t used to having the freedom to choose who she wants to be with. She’s been with hundreds of people, both men and women, but she can count the number of encounters she’s actually _wanted_ on one hand.

It makes Maria dangerous, but Natasha doesn’t draw away like she knows she should. Instead she continues to push Maria, drags her fingers over her skin, pins her to the mat with her thighs bracketing her waist, or even her neck (that time, Maria looks up at her with her pupils swallowing the blue of her eyes, and Natasha’s breath catches in the back of her throat), and waits to see how long it takes for Maria to snap.

***

Maria has family, parents and brothers and a sister, none of whom Natasha has actually met but that she’s heard countless stories of, over the years.

Maria had asked her, in the past, before a particularly dangerous mission, or when they thought the world was about to end, that if Natasha made it and Maria didn’t, if she’d tell her family what had happened.

It’s a promise that Natasha intends to keep, so when she discovers that Maria’s parents survived the Snap, she halts her desperate search for Thanos, packs a bag full of some of Maria’s belongings that she thinks her parents might want, and tells Steve that she’s taking a few personal days.

He looks relieved – whenever he’s nearby he looks at her with eyes filled with worry, and while he doesn’t dare treat her like she’s breakable, she knows he thinks she’s fragile, that a few days away might be good for her – and tells her not to hurry back, that he’ll call her if there’s any kind of Thanos-related breakthrough.

After the chaos, airlines are still largely non-operational, and Natasha doesn’t dare take a Quinjet in-case the others need it, so instead she finds a car and she drives to Chicago.

It’s almost nice, to feel like she’s doing something, to feel like she’s actually making progress, as the miles fly by, and the clock ticks on, and if she doesn’t look too closely out the window, then she can almost pretend that the last few days haven’t happened.

But they have, and by the time she’s pulling up outside of a homely three storey house in the suburbs, Natasha feels ill. She kills the ignition and sits in the car for a while, gathering herself, before she takes a deep breath and forces herself to the front door, pressing the bell with trembling fingers.

The woman who answers the door looks so much like Maria that for one long moment, Natasha swears she’s looking in to the eyes of a ghost, and it takes her a few moments to snap her jaw shut and remember that Maria had once told her that sometimes people had mistaken her and her sister for twins.

“You’re… you’re the Black Widow,” Maria’s sister – Natasha thinks she’s called Amelia – says, her eyes wide as she takes in the sight of Natasha standing on her parents’ doorstep. “What… what are you doing here?”

“Please call me Natasha.” She doesn’t want to be known by her alias, here – it feels improper, impersonal, when what she’s come to do is anything but. “I… are your parents here?”

“They’re inside.” She casts a quick glance over her shoulder, and instead of stepping aside to let Natasha pass, she takes a step closer to her, instead. “Is it… it’s Maria, isn’t it?” She asks, her voice quiet. “She’s gone?”

Natasha clenches her jaw so she doesn’t cry, giving a sharp nod of her head and watching as Amelia struggles to keep herself together. “She asked me… if anything ever happened to her, she asked me to tell her family.”

“Come in.” She ushers Natasha over the threshold, and Natasha follows her towards the sound of quiet voices, a heaviness in her heart that only grows when she catches sight of Maria’s parents sitting on a couch in the living room.

Maria’s mother’s eyes are red, and there are bags under her father’s, and Natasha realizes that it’s not only their daughter that the Hill family are mourning.

“This is Natasha.”

She hovers uncertainly in the doorway as she’s introduced, feeling out of place and on edge, hating that she’s about to add to their sorrow.

“She… she knew Maria.” Amelia’s voice wobbles, and it’s enough for her mother’s eyes to fill with tears, and Natasha feels like she wants to crawl out of her skin.

“Mr and Mrs Hill, I… I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but Maria was one of the ones we lost in the Snap.” The end of her sentence is almost drowned out by a sob, and Natasha watches as Maria’s father wraps an arm around his wife’s back and pulls her close. “Maria was… she was one of the good ones. One of the best agents I ever had the pleasure of working with and I… I am so sorry for your loss.” Natasha’s throat is tight with tears, and she takes a breath, tries to get herself back under control. “I thought you might like some of her things,” she continues, holding out the duffel bag thrown over her shoulder. “She’d want you to have them.”

“Thank you.” Amelia takes the bag and she squeezes Natasha hand, and when she asks if Natasha wants a drink she finds herself accepting, because her opportunities to remember Maria with others are few and far between.

“You lost your brothers, too, didn’t you?” Natasha asks when they’re in the kitchen, sitting at the large wooden table that dominates the center of the room, Amelia standing at the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew.

“Yeah.” Amelia’s eyes are sad. “And their families, too. Gone, in the blink of an eye.”

“I’m so sorry we couldn’t stop it.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself.” Amelia hands her a steaming mug and settles down in the seat next to her. “I’m sure you did everything you could.” Amelia stares down at her own mug like it holds the answers she’s looking for. “So, you and Maria worked together?”

“We were at SHIELD together,” Natasha confirms. “Never really in the field together too much.” Natasha had always wished they’d gone on more missions as a team, so that they’d have been able to snatch a few more precious hours together, but the stars had rarely aligned that way. “But we were training partners for a while. She held her own pretty well against me.”

“That sounds like our Maria. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.”

“Damn straight.” Natasha drains the last of her coffee before excusing herself to the bathroom, and on the way back, she lingers in the hallway, lets her gaze wander across the framed photographs scattered across the walls.

There are dozens of Maria, some of her as a child, a cheeky smile on her mouth, and others of her as a lanky teenager – there’s one of her wearing a bright pink dress, no more than fourteen years old, glowering at the camera in a way that makes Natasha chuckle in spite of herself.

She pauses just outside the kitchen door, in-front of a more recent photo of Maria. She isn’t looking at the camera, has her arms full of what must have been her nieces, her smile wide and carefree, her eyes shining with glee, and Natasha swallows around the lump in her throat, reaches out and traces her fingertips over the planes of Maria’s face, a single tear sliding down her cheek and splashing on the hardwood floor.

“You were close.” The voice startles her, and Natasha jumps, snatching her hand away from the photograph and whirling around to find Maria’s mother standing a few feet away, a small, sad smile on her mouth.

“I… I loved her.” It’s a soft, quiet admission, and it’s the first time she’s ever admitted it to anyone other than Maria, but she knows that it shows on her face, that she’s only confirming what Maria’s mother already suspects. “She was everything to me.”

She’s surprised by the hug that she’s enveloped in a moment later (and really, when _will_ the Hill women stop surprising her?), but falls into it all the same.

Before she returns to New York, she spends a few hours with Maria’s family, reminiscing, looks through countless photo albums and knows she will forever treasure the ones that Maria’s mother lets her take.

When they hug her goodbye, they tell her that she’s always welcome in their home, and she’s driving for hours before the tears finally stop running down her cheeks.

***

It’s months before Maria kisses her for the first time.

Months of wanting and longing, neither one of them willing to be the one to take the first step and cave in to the growing tension that simmers in the air between them, and Natasha has lost count of how many times she’s slipped a hand between her legs, wet and aching after spending an hour tangling with Maria, coming with Maria’s name on her lips.

Natasha’s in the showers after one such session, hot water pouring down her back, one hand braced against the cool tile, her eyes closed and her head bowed as her other hand draws circles around her clit.

She thinks she’s alone – Maria usually prefers the privacy of her own shower, but Natasha prefers the convenience of the ones adjourning the training room, and she knows that it’ll be hours before the earliest of early risers will be ready to start the day – and she’s never been one to be easily embarrassed, so she isn’t particularly quiet.

She thinks about the bite of Maria’s nails on her skin as she’d tried to wriggle out of Natasha’s grip and whimpers, remembers the strength of Maria’s thighs as she’d tried to flip them and groans, swears when she imagines what it would feel like to have Maria trembling all around her, and she’s so close, her hips rocking against her hand, knees starting to feel a little weak, when she hears the sound of the shower curtain being wrenched open behind her.

Natasha whirls around, ready to launch herself at the intruder, has come up with over eight ways to incapacitate them using just her hands and her shampoo bottle by the time she’s facing them, and she’s taken three menacing steps forward before her brain catches up with her eyes and realizes just who, exactly, is yanking the curtain closed behind them.

Maria stands tantalizing close, her eyes dark and her hair, loose around her shoulders – the first time Natasha has ever seen it down – starting to curl from the heat of the steam surrounding them.

Natasha wants to ask what the hell Maria thinks she’s doing, but she already knows the answer. She’s finally pushed Maria to breaking point, and all Natasha can think, as Maria backs her up against the shower wall, is _finally_.

Maria pauses, before she settles the weight of her body (which, Natasha is pleased to observe, is just as lithe and muscular as she’d imagined it would be) against Natasha fully, glances down at her lips and Natasha knows that Maria is giving her an out, is checking that she really wants this, but they both know it’s a moot point – Maria is yet to best her in a fight, and if Natasha didn’t want Maria’s arms bracketing her head, she wouldn’t allow it.

So she relaxes against the tile, and she reaches for Maria’s hips, her thumbs stroking along the delicate points of her hipbones and she grins when Maria’s breath stutters, digs her nails into the supple skin, and Maria hisses before she’s leaning down to capture Natasha’s lips in a kiss that’s molten fire.

Natasha fists a hand in Maria’s hair as she licks into her mouth, shudders as a thigh slides between her legs, and she was already close and now she feels like she’s going to come before Maria’s barely even touched her.

It’s been too long since someone else has touched her, longer still since she’s _wanted_ someone to touch her, and Natasha moans as Maria’s hands slip-slide over her skin, cupping her breasts, thumbs brushing against her nipples as she flicks her tongue against Natasha’s, and oh, Natasha had hoped Maria would be good at this, knows she’s not going to be disappointed as her hips grind against Maria’s thigh.

Her grip on Maria’s hair is so tight is must sting, but Maria doesn’t complain, kisses Natasha until she’s dizzy, until she’s aching, and when Maria’s fingers tug at her nipples, Natasha’s head thuds back against the tile behind her.

Maria chuckles, and then she gasps as Natasha pulls at her hair, and god, that’s a noise Natasha wants to hear over and over again. Her other hand slides over Maria’s hip until she’s digging her fingers into the supple skin of her ass, nails biting hard enough to leave a mark, and Maria groans against Natasha’s skin as her mouth drops to Natasha’s neck, pressing heated kisses against her skin.

Maria bites down, hard, and Natasha swears, her hips stuttering in their rhythm as she allows herself to fall apart. She’s barely stopped shaking when Maria’s fingers are slipping between her thighs, and Natasha whimpers as she brushes against slick flesh.

She leans back against the wall and shifts to wrap her leg around Maria’s hip, opening herself up and is rewarded by two fingers sliding inside of her, Maria’s mouth still working at her neck, and when she kisses the same spot she’d bitten it stings, and Natasha hisses, wondering just how much of a bruise it’s going to leave behind.

Not that she cares – she tilts her neck and invites Maria to bite down again, and when she does Natasha pulses around her fingers, drags her nails down Maria’s back and knows she won’t be the only one left with bruises by the time they’re done.

Maria curls her fingers, uses her hips to fuck Natasha harder, and she shifts to press her thumb against Natasha's clit and she has to bite back a scream as she comes, clenching around Maria’s fingers, glad for the solid weight of the other woman pressing her against the wall, because her knees feel a little shaky.

She urges Maria’s head away from her neck so that she can kiss her again, and lets her leg drop back down to the floor when Maria slides out of her, splaying damp fingers across Natasha’s hip, and Natasha catches her breath before she backs Maria up against the opposite wall, looking up at her with dark eyes.

The heat of the water on the cool skin of her back stings, but Natasha pays it no mind as she sinks down to her knees, pressing a biting kiss to the inside of Maria’s thigh and smirking when she trembles beneath her teeth.

Hands fist in her hair as she urges Maria’s leg over her shoulder, her heel pressing into Natasha’s back as she licks into Maria, groaning at the taste of her on her tongue, and as Maria swears above her, Natasha decides that she’s not going to stop until Maria begs her to.

***

They find Thanos, with a little help.

They find Thanos, but the stones are already gone, and any hope Natasha has that their new reality is just a short-lived, horrific nightmare fade as Thanos’ head hits the ground.

The trip back to Earth is a quiet, solemn affair, and Natasha keeps to herself, stares out at the stars flashing by and wonders what Maria would say, if she knew that Natasha had been to space without her.

Tears sting at her eyes but she refuses to let them fall, clenching her jaw and her fists and she keeps it together until they’re back at the compound, until she’s back in her room, and then she loses control completely.

She trashes it, choking on a scream, doesn’t stop until she’s standing in the ruins and her knuckles are bruised and bloodied, until her chest is heaving and she has no energy left, the fight going out of her as she sinks to her knees in the middle of the wreckage.

Steve is the only one brave enough to check on her, wraps his arms around her and helps her to her feet, patches up her wounds with his mouth set in a thin line. “I’m not going to give up,” he says, once he’s carefully bandaged up her hands, his gaze fierce as he looks up at her. “We’ve always found a way before. This time will be no different.”

Natasha nods, because she doesn’t want to give up, either, doesn’t want to believe that Maria really is gone for good.

She needs a mission, she _always_ has a mission, whether it be one for the Red Room or SHIELD or the Avengers. She needs a mission and she gives herself two: keep looking for a way to bring the fallen back, and make sure to protect the world from any further threats.

Earth is vulnerable, and Natasha doesn’t mind throwing herself on the front lines to protect it. And she’s not the only one – Tony leaves, and Clint soon follows, the two of them unable to cope with the weight of their grief, but the others keep in touch, even as they retreat back to their own corners of the galaxy.

Natasha never thought of herself as a leader, but in this new world, she steps up, because god only knew she could do with a distraction, and it turns out she’s pretty good at it, too. She co-ordinates from the Avengers facility, and she’s ruthless in her pursuit of those who set out to do this new world harm.

Steve stays close, content to stay out of the field, for the most part, but he checks up on her a lot those first few weeks, and she’s grateful for it. It gets lonely, living in that huge building by herself, surrounded by the ghost of memories of happier times, and she enjoys the days where the others drop by, fleeting as those visits may be, because it offers her a precious distraction from the isolation she sometimes feels like she’s drowning in.

Time passes, but her wounds never truly heal (Natasha is sure they never will), and through it all, Maria is never too far from her mind.

***

They start fucking regularly, after that first time.

For Natasha, it’s a welcome stress-reliever, and she enjoys seeing what sounds she can drag out of Maria when she’s spread out beneath her, makes it her latest mission to map out every inch of Maria’s body with lips and teeth and tongue, and find all the spots that make her weak in the knees.

They’re well-matched, in the bedroom – there’s a push and pull that’s not dissimilar to the way that they spar, although unlike when they’re on the mat, sometimes Natasha lets Maria come out on top.

She likes the solid weight of Maria pressing up against her, likes it when she holds down her wrists and tells her not to move an inch, likes the way that Maria’s eyes flash if Natasha dares to disobey her, likes the roughness of her voice as she’s breathing commands into Natasha’s ear.

They have rules, though they’re unspoken, because one of them is that they don’t talk about what they’re doing. They communicate in heated glances and touches and whispered cries of ‘oh, god, don’t stop’, and that suits them both just fine.

They also never spend the night. Whether they meet in Maria’s bunk or Natasha’s (or in the showers, or the conference room, or in darkened hallways when they’re looking for the danger of potential discovery), neither one of them takes the time to bask in the afterglow, and there is absolutely no cuddling, no matter how tempting it may be to stretch out beside one another when they’re both sweaty and sated.

Natasha is approved for field-duty, and she starts going on missions with Clint, her partner and pain-in-the-ass, and Maria is given her own team to train, supervise and lead, and it means that the time that they have together becomes limited.

Sometimes, it’s weeks before they can tangle up together in the sheets, and the anticipation makes them more needy, more desperate, whenever they can snatch a few hours on the rare occasion they’re both on the Helicarrier.

After a particularly long mission that has had her and Clint traipsing across Europe for the better part of six weeks, Natasha is disappointed to find upon her return that Maria is on duty somewhere that is _not_ on the Helicarrier, and mopes around, filled with sexual frustration, waiting for her to return.

She knows that it would be easy to seduce one of the agents she’s seen eyeing her in the cafeteria on the rare occasions she ventures in there when it’s busy, but she doubts it will give her the same satisfaction that Maria gives her, and she tells herself that it doesn’t mean that she’s growing too attached.

She’s training with Clint, three days after arriving back on the Helicarrier, when there’s a flurry of activity in the corridor outside.

“What’s that all about?” Clint says, before he’s padding over to the doorway and sticking his head out, Natasha trailing a few steps behind him and watching as he corners a passing agent. “What’s going on?”

“A team just arrived back with casualties. Not sure how bad it is yet.”

“What team?” Natasha asks, ignoring the way that his eyes widen as he’s addressed by the Black Widow – she keeps to herself, for the most part, is alone except when she’s with Clint or Maria, but that’s always behind closed doors unless they’re sparring.

“Uh, Hill’s, I think.”

Natasha goes very still, barely even notices the agent scurrying away, or Clint starting to walk back to the mats, until he’s calling her name.

“Tasha?” He’s frowning, when she turns to look at him, and it takes a monumental effort for Natasha to smooth her expression into something neutral. “You alright?”

“I’m fine.” She forces herself to get back on the mat, ignores the anxious feeling swirling around her stomach – it’s foreign, alien, and she doesn’t _like_ it – distracts herself by seeing how many times she can kick Clint’s ass.

It’s hours before she can sneak down to the medbay, pads quietly down the halls when most people are asleep, and when she gets there she presses her face against the glass windows and peers inside, and something twists in her chest when she sees Maria lying on one of the beds within.

Natasha slinks inside, and she’s managed to read half of the chart hooked to the end of Maria’s bed – she has a gunshot wound to her shoulder, a broken radius, and two cracked ribs – before she’s confronted by a doctor.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Natasha simply turns and offers him her most poisonous of glares, and struggles not to smirk when he takes a hasty step backwards.

“I’m visiting.” Natasha drops down into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs sitting beside Maria’s bed and folds her arms across her chest, tilting her jaw up in defiance. “You got a problem with that?”

“I… I guess not.”

He leaves, and Natasha slouches back in the chair, kicking her feet up on the edge of Maria’s bed, careful not to jostle her, and watches the slow rise and fall of Maria’s chest.

It’s comforting, to see that she’s still breathing, and Natasha refuses to think about why she’s so relieved to know that Maria is okay. Natasha doesn’t get attached easily – she’d always been told that it was a weakness, to care, had never allowed herself to form lasting relationships with anybody, and it’s terrifying, to think that Maria has become someone who _matters_ to her, someone that she’d miss if she were gone.

Maria’s become a staple part of her life at SHIELD, and Natasha doesn’t like thinking about what it would be like if she were no longer there. Natasha doesn’t know when Maria had gotten so close, when they’d become so intertwined, and it takes being confronted with the reminder that Maria isn’t invincible, that one day, she might not come home, for Natasha to realize just how much she likes having Maria around.

She thinks she should start to pull away, because it would be safer for the both of them – Natasha wreaks havoc, death and destruction, and if any of her enemies ever found out there was someone she cared for, she dreads to think what might happen to Maria, if she wasn’t able to protect her.

She’s debating whether it had been a mistake to come, whether to slip away as quietly as she arrived, when Maria’s eyes flutter open, a pained gasp wrenching from her mouth as she comes to, and she blinks sleepily at Natasha for a few moments before her eyes focus.

“Natasha?” Her voice is raspy, and she tries to shift so that she’s sitting up but she freezes with another hiss of pain and Natasha is quick to move, wrapping her fingers around Maria’s shoulder and gently pressing her back against the mattress.

“Don’t move, you’re only going to hurt yourself.”

“What… what are you doing here?” Maria is looking up at her with a frown, her face pale, a cut on her cheek that’s been carefully sewn shut, and she looks so vulnerable like this that Natasha’s heart aches.

“Heard you got hurt.” Natasha shrugs and settles back down into the chair once she’s sure Maria isn’t going to try and move again. “Wanted to come see it for myself – clearly you didn’t learn much from our sparring sessions, huh?”

“You should see the other guy,” Maria says, but her smile is weak and her eyes are already starting to flutter closed, the drug cocktail that she’s on to lessen her pain starting to pull her back under.

“He dead?” Natasha asks, because if he isn’t, she’s going to hunt him down and kill him herself.

“Yeah.”

“Atta girl.”

Maria’s eyes slip closed fully, her breathing evening out a few moments later, and Natasha stands and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead before slipping back into the night.

She visits Maria every day until she’s discharged, and when Maria crawls into her bed later that night, Natasha touches her carefully, presses her lips gently to every cut and bruise until Maria is shaking beneath her, and afterwards, when she draws Maria into her arms, her hand resting over Maria’s heart, the beat of it comforting, Maria doesn’t pull away.

They wake up the next morning with their legs tangled up together, Natasha’s arm still around Maria’s waist, and they don’t talk about that, either.

(It’s the best night’s sleep Natasha has had in years).

***

Time passes, and the new world starts to find its feet.

It rises from the ashes, and while it may not be stronger than before, it is more resilient, and Natasha thinks that she is the same.

She doesn’t feel as strong as she used to, not without Maria, warm and sturdy and constant, there for Natasha to draw strength from whenever she faltered, but she thinks that she might be stronger in other ways, because she’s managed to keep on going, keep on living, where many others who had lost loved ones haven’t.

And maybe it’s a ghost of the life she’d used to have, maybe it’s not filled with as much happiness as it used to be, but Natasha likes her new role, likes leading, likes working with the others to keep people safe.

She’s never had a family, but the Avengers had become her family when they’d become a team – it was a level of trust and comradery that Natasha wasn’t used to, and she doesn’t know if she’d have been able to let them in if not for Clint and Maria opening her up, teaching her that she _could_ trust others, and her world wouldn’t crumble, it didn’t make her vulnerable, it wouldn’t tear her apart.

They no longer call themselves the Avengers, but she still thinks of them as her family. Steve is her annoying and overbearing big brother, constantly checking up on her, Rocket is her annoying little brother that likes blowing things up just a little too much, Carol is the overachieving older sister that matches Natasha’s banter with a smirk, Nebula is the black sheep that pretends she’s reluctant to associate with the rest of them but secretly enjoys their company, Rhodey is the exasperated uncle and Okoye is the cool aunt that helps Natasha keep them all in line.

She finds herself a part of another family, too, keeping her promise to Maria’s parents to stay in touch. She calls them every week, and she visits whenever she can spare the time. She spends the holidays with them, at Maria’s mother’s insistence when she finds out that Natasha’s planning on spending Christmas alone at the Avenger’s facility, and she learns all about the Hill family traditions, gets to share more memories of Maria, curled up on the couch with a mug of hot cocoa beside Maria’s sister.

She spends the night in Maria’s childhood bed, and imagines what she would have been like as a teenager.

Natasha had never been allowed a childhood, had grown up far too fast, experienced so many terrible things at such a young age, but she wonders what things would have been like if she’d had a normal life.

She wonders what life would have been like if she and Maria had met in high school, if they’d get along or if they’d hate each other, and she thinks, based on how their relationship had started, that it would probably be the latter.

When she gets back to New York, she visits the memorial that bears Maria’s name under the cover of darkness, and lays flowers at the base of it.

She goes there often, likes to trace her fingertips over the letters of Maria Hill, carved into the smooth marble, and talks to Maria like she’s there in-front of her. Sometimes, if Natasha closes her eyes and thinks hard enough, it’s almost like she is.

Natasha’s memory has always been impeccable, which is both a blessing and a curse. It means that she can remember all too well the exact color of Maria’s eyes, the feeling of her skin beneath Natasha’s hands, the sounds she’d make when Natasha touched her.

But she can also remember the curve of Maria’s lips when she smiled, the way she looked in the morning when she’d just woken up, tousled hair and bleary eyes, the way she’d sing in the shower when she thought Natasha couldn’t hear her.

“I miss you,” Natasha says, pressing her palm against Maria’s name. “I miss you every day. I wish you were here. We promised we’d always make it back to each other, and I haven’t given up hope yet, Maria. I promise I’ll never stop looking for a way.”

She tells Maria about spending Christmas with her family, wonders what Maria would think, if she were there to see it. They’d spent the holidays together only once (Natasha never really had a reason to celebrate, and Maria had her own traditions that Natasha didn’t want to infringe upon), and it had been with Clint’s family on the homestead a few years ago.

She tells Maria about her recent trip to Wakanda, catches her up on everything that she’s missing. She speaks until her voice is raw, until tears slide down her cheeks, until she runs out of things to say.

“I’ll come back to see you soon,” Natasha promises, dropping her hand back down to her side. “I love you.”

She turns and disappears into the night, and she’s back at home twenty minutes later. It’s as quiet as it always is, Natasha still the only one living there full-time, but she doesn’t mind it. She pads through the silent hallways and to her room (rebuilding it after she’d trashed it had kept her occupied for a few weeks) and climbs into her bed, knowing she won’t snatch more than a few hours of sleep, but that’s all she’s needed, lately.

She sleeps in one of Maria’s ratty old t-shirts, and even though it stopped smelling of her months ago, it still brings her some small sense of comfort as she drifts into unconsciousness. 

***

They start sleeping in the same bed, but they still don’t talk about it.

Maria seems content to let Natasha set the pace, seems to know that pushing will spook her, that she’s never really done this before, that she has absolutely no idea what she’s doing.

So she waits for Natasha to reach out and pull her close, when they’re in Natasha’s bed, or she doesn’t mention it when Natasha refuses to leave her own, and it works for the both of them.

Maria is benched for two months while she recovers from her injuries. She spends it on the Helicarrier, catches up on paperwork, and because there’s no mission important enough for Natasha to attend to, it’s the longest they’ve been able to spend together so far.

Natasha likes waking up next to Maria in the morning, likes the heat of her bare skin, pressing against her side. Natasha carefully tends to her wounds, and when she’s cleared to start training again, Natasha is the partner she chooses to help her get back to full strength.

Maria raises her eyebrows when Natasha drops into the empty seat opposite her in the cafeteria one morning, but she wisely chooses not to comment on the change in their daily routine, and instead scoops up another mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“The food here is terrible,” Natasha sighs as she spears a sausage on her fork, looking at it forlornly before lifting it to her mouth. “I miss real food.”

“It’s not so bad,” Maria replies, shrugging, and Natasha shoots her a look of disbelief. “I mean, it’s not the best, but it’s better than nothing.”

“What _is_ the best?” Natasha asks, and Maria eyes her curiously. It’s the closest to small talk they’ve ever gotten, but Natasha wants to learn more about Maria. They spend so much time together, but Natasha doesn’t know her, not on a friendly level, anyway – she knows every inch of Maria’s body, knows where she likes to be touched and exactly how much pressure to apply, knows that she whines, in the back of her throat, when she’s about to come, but she doesn’t know anything about her outside of the bedroom.

She knows the facts that are in her file – she knows her age, where she was born, where she’d gone to school, her entire military and SHIELD history, but she doesn’t know anything personal. She doesn’t know if she gets on with her parents, if she has any brothers or sisters, how old she was when she had her first kiss, if she’s ever been in love, her favorite color.

Natasha doesn’t know when these details about Maria became important to her, but suddenly, they _are_ , and she wants to learn everything she possibly can about the woman sitting opposite her.

“There’s a pretty great Italian restaurant in New York,” Maria says conversationally, though her blue eyes bore into Natasha’s like she’s desperately trying to figure her out. “And there’s a place down the street from my apartment that does bagels to die for.”

“You have an apartment?” Natasha supposes it makes sense, but she’s never seen Maria exist in a space outside of the Helicarrier, never considered that she has another life, outside this ship, and she wonders if Maria is different when she’s not wearing her SHIELD uniform.

Natasha wonders if she wears her hair down, if she lounges on her couch wearing sweats and watching shitty reality TV, if she sings along to the radio when she cooks – if she _can_ even cook at all.

“Well, yeah. Gotta keep my stuff somewhere.”

“I find it hard to believe that Maria my-bunk-is-so-sparsely-decorated-it-looks-like-no-one-lives-in-it Hill needs a whole apartment to keep her stuff in.”

“Maybe I’m a secret hoarder.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I could be,” Maria replies, sipping from a mug of horrible cafeteria coffee. “You’d have no idea.” Maria’s teasing, but in light of Natasha’s earlier epiphany that she wants to get to know her better, it stings, and she doesn’t like the way it makes her feel.

“Then I guess you’re just going to have to invite me over so I can see for myself.” Natasha keeps her voice light, but Maria still chokes on a mouthful of coffee, and Natasha smirks at the pink tinge to her cheeks as she coughs and sets the mug down.

“Seriously?”

“Why not?” Natasha shrugs, watching Maria closely.

“I… just didn’t expect you to want to,” Maria says, slowly, and Natasha tries not to think that the confused frown on her face is adorable. “Natasha, what - ”

Natasha never hears the end of Maria’s sentence, because at that moment, Clint slides into the seat next to her, and Maria quickly snaps her jaw shut.

“Are you feeling okay, Tasha?” He asks, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he’s interrupting (or, more likely, he just doesn’t _care_ ), shoveling eggs into his mouth at an alarmingly fast rate. “I’ve never seen you in here at this time – you _do_ know there are other people around, right?”

“Shut up.” Natasha kicks him in the shin, and smirks when he winces. “I’m integrating. Didn’t you tell me I should make more of an effort to try and fit in?”

“I said you should stop scaring the shit out of junior agents for fun,” Clint replies, pointing at her with his fork.

“But it’s so _easy_.” They’re all terrified of her (as are a few of the more senior agents, with good cause – she knows she killed more than a few SHIELD agents during her days as the Red Room’s puppet). “You spoil all my fun.”

“Kinda my job, Tasha,” Clint says, but he’s grinning, and Natasha is glad that, of all the agents they could have sent to kill her, it was him they’d chosen – she doubts she’d have let anyone else bring her in, but then, maybe Fury had anticipated that. “You healing alright, Hill?” Clint turns his attention to Maria, who’s been watching them bicker with a bemused smile. “Heard your team got hit pretty bad.”

“I’m getting there.” Maria looks a little uncomfortable, with Clint there, unsure how to act, and when Natasha curls her foot around the side of Maria’s calf, trying to get her to relax, she jumps so hard she bangs her knee on the underside of the table. “I, um, I should probably get going. I’ll see you both around.”

She flashes Natasha one last smile before she disappears, leaving Natasha and Clint alone, and she feels his curious gaze on the side of her face as soon as Maria is out of sight.

“So, what’s going on with you and Hill?” He asks, wiggling his eyebrows, and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Nothing.”

“Please. I’ve literally never seen you speak to anyone other than me on this Helicarrier, and you just randomly decide to sit with her one day? Nah.” He shakes his head. “That’s not you.”

“Maybe it’s the new me.”

“You sleeping with her?” He asks, point blank, and Natasha turns her best Black Widow stare on him. “I don’t care if you are.”

“Gee, thanks, your blessing really means a lot to me.”

He grins at the tone of her voice, and knows better than to try and press her for answer.

“I’m going to go scare some of the new recruits,” she decides, stealing a piece of his toast and dancing away before he can catch her. “I’ll see you later for your daily ass-kicking.”

He’s not as good a training partner as Maria, but while Maria’s been recovering, he’s been a decent substitute, and if she trains with him, it means that the time she and Maria get together can be spent in bed, instead.

Instead of scaring anyone, she goes in search of Maria, knocks on the door of the room she’d slipped out of only a few hours ago. Maria looks surprised to see her standing in the hall, and Natasha wonders who else she was expecting as Maria waves her inside.

“We never finished our conversation,” Natasha murmurs, reaching for Maria’s hips and tugging her close by the belt loops of her pants, letting Maria back her up against the closed door. “What were you going to ask me?”

“I…” Maria’s looking down at her, open and unguarded, and there’s something tender about the way she tucks a strand of hair behind Natasha’s ear. “Natasha, what are we doing?”

It’s been almost seven months since they first started sleeping together, and it’s the first time either of them have verbalized it, the first time Maria has ever pressed Natasha about anything close to her feelings, and Natasha looks away from Maria’s searching gaze, focuses on her hands, fiddling with the leather of Maria’s belt.

“Honestly? I don’t know.” Because she doesn’t – she’s never had this before, she’s never spent so long with the same person, certainly never spent the night so many times, hasn’t even slept with someone as much as she’s slept with Maria. It’s all new to her, and it still terrifies her, but she doesn’t think it scares her enough for her to walk away from Maria and never look back. “But I… I like being with you.”

Being vulnerable is new to her, too, and when Maria reaches out to gently tilt up her jaw, forcing Natasha to meet her gaze, she has to fight the urge to wrench herself away.

“I like being with you, too.” Maria says it with a shaky exhale, holding Natasha’s gaze, her thumb stroking across Natasha’s cheek.

“Does it… does it have to be anything more than that?”

“I’m not asking for your hand in marriage, Natasha.”

It’s a joke, but Natasha still stiffens, her back straightening and her mind screaming at her to _run_ , but Maria doesn’t let her, presses Natasha back against the door and kisses the panic from her lips.

“I just… I just want to make sure we’re on the same page,” Maria continues when they part, the both of them breathless, Maria’s fingers stroking through her hair, and Natasha struggles to keep her eyes open at the feeling. “I just want to know whether or not you’re going to keep coming back to me.”

There’s a vulnerability in Maria’s voice, this time, her eyes open and unguarded and Natasha knows that this isn’t easy for either of them, but for Maria, she wants to try, she wants to see if she can be normal, wants to try and have a lasting relationship that doesn’t end in disaster.

“I’m not planning on going anywhere, Maria.” It’s not quite a promise, it’s not quite what Natasha knows Maria wants her to give, but it’s the closest she can manage – she doesn’t want to make a promise she can’t keep, and she’s all too aware that in her line of work, there will come a day where she can’t come home. “Are you?” Natasha pokes at the nearly-healed bullet-wound in Maria’s shoulder, making her hiss and wrap her hand around Natasha’s wrist, pressing it back against the door. “You gonna be more careful next time so you make it back to me?”

“I’ll try my best,” Maria says, and that’s good enough for Natasha.

She decides that they’ve done enough talking, feels too raw and exposed under the weight of Maria’s gaze, so she surges up on her toes and kisses Maria hard, curling a hand around the collar of her shirt and slipping her tongue into Maria’s mouth when she groans.

She allows Maria to test out the strength of her recently broken arm as she wraps her hands around Natasha’s thighs and lifts her, easily pinning Natasha to the wall. She presses open-mouthed kisses to the slope of Natasha’s neck as Natasha locks her ankles at the small of Maria’s back, yanking Maria’s hair out of its prim and proper bun so that she can bury her hands in it, tugging when teeth nip at her skin.

Maria has the presence of mind to click the lock shut before she turns to walk Natasha back to her bed, and Natasha thinks that it’s a good thing neither of them having anything important to do that day, because she isn’t planning to stop touching Maria for a long time yet.

***

Steve keeps fussing over her, worrying about her being in the facility alone, and when he suggests she come to his support group, she scoffs, because Natasha can barely open up to him, a man she trusts and has known for years, so how could being in a room of complete strangers possibly help her?

“You never know,” he says, small, sad smile on his face. “There’s something about the anonymity that really helps people. It’s good to talk about what happened.”

“When have you ever known me to be someone who talks about her problems?” Natasha asks, folding her arms across her chest like it might protect her from Steve’s probing gaze.

“Just… give it a chance?” He turns to her, his eyes pleading, but Natasha shakes her head. “Well, if you change your mind, here are the details.” He waves a flyer towards her, and when Natasha doesn’t take it from him, he leaves it on the table, instead. “Think about it.”

She throws the flyer away, tells herself that she’s not going to think about, but she _does_ , so she fishes it out of the trash and finds herself making her way into the city.

Even when the sun is shining, New York seems to exist in permanent darkness, the shadow of Thanos’ victory looming over the high-rise buildings, some of them still rubble from his first attempt to take the time stone.

Natasha doesn’t like it.

Once, she loved walking the city streets, the sense of freedom it gave her, but now, it’s a reminder of everything she’s lost, a constant reminder of Maria hiding around every corner – there’s that bagel place she’d insisted Natasha try, there’s the Italian restaurant where they’d had their first dinner together, there’s the Chinese place that Natasha had used to grab take-out from when she was on her way over.

Her throat is tight by the time she makes it to the address Steve left for her, the grief that she tries so hard to force somewhere deep down clawing its way to the surface and threatening to ruin her.

She goes inside the building, but when she finds the right room and hears the quiet sound of Steve’s voice, she can’t quite force herself to walk through the door. She tries – she tells herself that she’s being ridiculous, but then she catches a glimpse of the room within, the sad little circle of chairs and the lost expression on the faces of the people sitting in them, and she wavers.

Instead, she stands with her back to the wall beside the doorway, and she listens.

It takes her three more attempts before she manages to force herself to sit on one of the rickety chairs inside, and she can’t look Steve in the eye because she thinks if he smiles at her she might break.

Natasha’s never thought of herself as fragile, but she feels breakable as she clasps her hands in her lap, trying to ignore the curious eyes taking in the newcomer, and she wonders if any of them recognize her – not that she even recognizes herself anymore, when she looks in the mirror.

She’s a shadow of the woman she used to be, living a shadow of a life, but she doesn’t know how to go back to the way things were before, how to pretend that everything is fine, like she’s not one bad day away from shattering completely.

She listens to the stories of other people in the group, and realizes that she’s not alone, she isn’t the only one who feels like this, and she doesn’t know why it’s comforting to hear that but it _is_. It doesn’t make her feel any better, but she does feel less alone, feels like she’s found somewhere she belongs, in the most unexpected of places.

It’s another five sessions before she actually speaks for the first time, and she looks down at her hands, pretends she’s speaking to Maria because that makes it easier, that’s something she’s used to, something she can handle.

“I never thought I’d ever fall in love.” Her voice sounds too quiet, even as it echoes around the room. “I didn’t think I was capable of it, even. I definitely never thought that anyone could ever love _me_ after all the terrible things I’ve done. But when I least expected it… there she was.” Natasha still struggles to talk about Maria without crying, clenches her jaw and her fingers into fists and blinks to keep the tears at bay.

“For ten years, we were happy. I don’t know how it worked, how I didn’t scare her away or let my own insecurities get in the way, and it wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t matter. It was one of the few good things I ever had in my life, but just like everything else… it slipped through my fingers.” She pauses to take a breath, but can’t face lifting her head, doesn’t want to see anyone looking at her with sympathy or pity, doesn’t want Steve to see the lost look in her own eyes.

“It’s just… it’s not _fair_. Why was I the one that got left behind? Why couldn’t she have been one of the ones who survived? Who… who decided which of us got to stay and suffer? They say it’s random but is it, really? How would any of us know?” Her hands shake, and Natasha forces herself to take another breath, unclenching her fists to smooth her hands down her thighs, instead. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m being punished. If this is my atonement for all the wrongs I’ve committed in the past –being forced to live in a world without her in it. And I don’t… I don’t know how to _do_ that. How to keep carrying on and pretending that everything’s fine.”

“I think that’s something we’re all struggling with,” Steve says, voice as reasonable as ever and god, he’s perfect for things like this, and it’s no wonder that this is where he’s found himself, that he’s found a new way to help people in this strange and awful world. “Does anyone else have anything they want to share?”

Natasha normally bolts the second they wrap things up, but today she lingers, sipping lukewarm coffee from a polystyrene cup, and she’s not surprised when Steve comes to stand beside her.

“Donut?” He asks, holding out a box from the bakery down the street, but Natasha shakes her head. “Your loss.” He takes one before setting the box down on the table for the others that have stayed behind to talk to one another.

Natasha likes the sound of it, the mindless chatter, filling the silence that she’s otherwise surrounded by, likes that no-one expects her to join in. Not even Steve pushes her, just waits beside her until she wants to speak, if she wants to, and it’s just one of the many things that she loves about him.

“You were right.” Natasha offers it a little begrudgingly, staring down at the brown sludge in the bottom of her cup, Steve’s shoulder brushing against her own. “Coming here helps, a little.”

“I’m glad.” He offers her a lop-sided smile, and he has powdered sugar all around his mouth and he looks so ridiculous that she can’t help but laugh. “What you said, about being punished… I don’t think that’s true, Nat.”

“You don’t know all the things that I’ve done.”

“Maybe not, but I _do_ know all the good you’ve done over the past few years,” he says, voice quiet. “You’ve saved the world, more than once – I don’t think you’re still making up for the past. I don’t think you’re in the red anymore.”

“Then why did we lose? Why isn’t she here?”

“I don’t know,” Steve sighs, and Natasha doesn’t shrug him off when he drapes an arm around her shoulders, allows him to pull her close, and she rests her head against his chest. “But I have to believe that there’s a reason for all of this. I have to believe that we’re going to win, in the end.”

Natasha has to believe that, too, or she doesn’t know how she’s going to force herself out of bed in the morning.

He asks her if she wants to get dinner in a diner down the street, and Natasha agrees, because the only thing waiting for her back at the facility is silence and a microwave meal, and it’s nice to feel like a normal person, for once.

As they step out into the cool early evening air, Natasha feels a little lighter, like a bit of the weight that’s been crushing her for the past few months has lifted.

She keeps going back, starts to share more and more, starts to spend time with some of the regular attendees outside of the four walls of that room. She doesn’t go to every session, but she tries to make it as often as she can, and it gives her something to look forward to, something other than the endlessly monotony of life alone in the facility, and slowly, over time, little by little, Natasha feels herself start to heal.

***

The first time she and Maria have overlapping leave, Maria invites her to spend the week at her New York City apartment.

Natasha leaps at the opportunity, even if it will easily be the longest time they’ve spent together, will be a test of this fragile thing that’s slowly blossoming between them, this thing that they dare not call a relationship, even though it’s been almost a year since Natasha so much as looked at someone else. 

Maria’s already been home for a few days when Natasha arrives back from the field, and she makes a brief stop at the Helicarrier for a mission debrief before she’s let loose in the world.

It’s the first time she’s been out unsupervised since SHIELD had taken her in, and Natasha revels in the freedom as she walks down Maria’s street, wonders if her commanding officer would’ve looked less nervous to let Natasha go if he knew where she’s planning on spending her time.

Natasha debates scaling Maria’s fire escape and sneaking in, just for fun, but in the end she decides to knock on her front door, instead. Maria answers it wearing a smile, sweats and a faded West Point t-shirt, and Natasha presses a kiss to her lips as she steps past her and into her home.

It’s almost as sparsely decorated as her bunk back on the Helicarrier, decorated in hues of white and gray, a few photographs dotted around the open-plan apartment, and Natasha takes it all in as she shrugs out of her coat and hangs it on the hook on the back of the door.

“I _knew_ you weren’t a hoarder,” Natasha says, turning to find Maria watching her, her eyes darkening as she takes in Natasha’s low-cut blouse and skin-tight black jeans.

“You haven’t seen the rest of the place yet,” Maria counters. “Maybe my bedroom’s a bombsite.”

“Oh yeah?” Natasha raises an eyebrow, watching Maria advance towards her. “You’re not just saying that to get me into your bed?”

“Mm, maybe,” Maria murmurs, hands reaching for Natasha as she runs her tongue along her bottom lip – it’s been three weeks since they’d seen each other, and there’s desire in Maria’s eyes as she toys with the bottom button of Natasha’s shirt. “I hope you weren’t wearing that in the field.”

“I changed before I came over here – I thought you’d appreciate it.”

“Very much.” Maria’s eyes run the length of her body, and Natasha feels the heat of her gaze like it’s a tangible thing.

Maria is barefoot, and Natasha still has on her boots, and it means that they’re almost the same height, so Maria doesn’t have to duck her head when she kisses her. Natasha sighs into her mouth, refuses to think that kissing Maria feels a lot like coming home, and winds her arms around Maria’s neck as she deepens the kiss.

Natasha lets Maria push her against the back of the couch, and runs her hands under the soft material of Maria’s shirt, tracing her fingertips over defined abs before she’s cupping Maria’s breasts in her hands, and she groans when she discovers that she’s not wearing a bra, Maria arching into her touch as Natasha circles her nipples with her thumbs.

Maria has a thigh between Natasha’s legs and all of the buttons of her shirt undone when there’s a beeping from behind them, and Maria groans as she pulls away from Natasha’s mouth.

“What’s that?” Natasha asks, hands still toying with Maria’s breasts, and she smirks as she watches Maria’s eyes flutter closed, her forehead resting against Natasha’s.

“That is dinner.” Maria’s voice is shaky, and she swears when Natasha scrapes her nails over her ribs. “Which is going to burn if you don’t stop touching me like that.”

“Let it,” Natasha says, her voice low in Maria’s ear, and she’s gratified by Maria’s shudder when she nips at her earlobe. “We can be quick.”

“I don’t want to be quick.” Maria’s voice is husky, and she runs her hands up the length of Natasha’s thighs. “I want to take my time, I want you wet and aching and begging for me to touch you, and then I'm not going to stop until you can’t take it anymore.”

“Fuck, Maria.” Natasha digs her nails into Maria’s ass, feels her hips rock against her and draws her into another kiss.

Maria encourages Natasha to wrap her legs around her hips, and she walks them into the kitchen without breaking the kiss, depositing Natasha on the kitchen counter and turning off the timer and the stove, and then Maria eases Natasha’s jeans over her hips and buries her face between Natasha’s thighs.

They fuck on the kitchen counter, against the back of the couch, on the rug spread out across the living room floor and against the wall in the hallway before they make it to Maria’s bed.

It’s hours before they emerge, long after the sky has darkened, and Maria’s kitchen is illuminated by the light of the moon as they go in search of food. The lasagna Maria had spent the afternoon making still sits in the oven, and Natasha watches as Maria microwaves two huge slices, perched on one of the stools at her kitchen counter.

She’s wearing only her underwear and one of Maria’s shirts, and Maria’s hand is warm on her thigh as they eat and sip from glasses of red wine.

It’s the kind of domesticity that Natasha never for a second imagined she’d ever have, but it doesn’t make her want to run for the hills. It’s a welcome break from the hectic nature of her normal life, and Maria is different, outside of the Helicarrier – she’s more relaxed, more carefree, is less Agent Hill and more civilian Maria, and Natasha finds that she likes this look on her.

They spend seven days inside that apartment, only leaving the bedroom to eat, and Natasha thinks it’s one of the best weeks she’s ever had.

***

Sometimes, something happens somewhere in the world that brings Natasha’s ragtag family of superheroes together again.

After one such fight – when _will_ aliens learn to leave Earth the _fuck_ alone? – Natasha opens up the Avengers facility to tend to the wounds of the injured (Okoye has a broken arm, and Nebula has some fried circuitry that she insists she doesn’t need any help to fix) and to offer a place to stay for any of their off-world friends.

Carol Danvers takes her up on that offer before she disappears back to… wherever she goes – Natasha isn’t sure if she has a place of her own, or if she just flits from planet to planet, saving the day as she goes – and when she asks Natasha if she wants a drink, Natasha agrees, because it’s always nice when she isn’t the only one home.

“Does this even do anything for you?” Natasha asks as she pours a glass of vodka for them both, handing one over to Carol before taking a seat at the conference table in what has become her office.

“I could say the same thing to you – Russians can handle their alcohol, right?”

“Damn straight.” Natasha downs her drink in a single gulp to prove the point, and Carol smirks at her over the edge of her own glass before she follows suit, and Natasha thinks it’s going to be one of _those_ nights where she drinks more than she should and wakes up with a hangover to remind her that she’s not as young as she used to be.

(She’s used to those kind of nights, although she doesn’t usually have a partner – it’s easier for her to slip into a deep sleep when she’s drunk, and sure, it’s not the healthiest of habits, but she only does it when it’s been a while since she slept more than a few hours, and it’s _fine_ ).

“So, Romanoff,” Carol says, dropping into the seat beside Natasha and sliding the bottle of vodka over the table towards her once she’s refilled her own glass. “Wanna tell me the reason for that haunted look in your eyes?”

“Watch it, Danvers – you should be careful about prying into the life of an assassin.” She fills her glass and leans back in her chair, allowing herself to relax for the first time since she’d realized a fight was on the way.

“Assassin, huh?” Carol quirks an eyebrow. “Sounds interesting.”

“Not really.” Natasha certainly doesn’t think so, especially compared to Carol’s past. “Are we really exchanging life stories?”

“Why not? We’ve worked together a few times, now, but I don’t know anything about you. Aside from what I’ve guessed, anyway.”

“Not many people do.” Especially now – Natasha had started to open up a little, before her world had imploded, but now she’s just as, or maybe even more, guarded than she’d used to be. “But I’ll bite – what do you think you know?”

“Well, I always figured with the way you fight that you had some kind of military background, but I guess assassin training is probably even more rigorous, so that makes sense. You don’t trust easily – which isn’t a great quality in a leader, by the way – and you don’t open up, maybe to anyone. You’ve been hurt, you’ve experienced loss, and you’re reckless, sometimes, when you fight because there’s a part of you that believes that you have nothing left to live for.” Carol pauses to take another sip of vodka, and raises an eyebrow at Natasha over the rim of her glass. “Am I close?”

“I thought you were an air force pilot, not a psychologist,” Natasha grumbles, and Carol grins.

“Aw, you’ve read up on me?”

“You were the reason Fury came up with the Avengers Initiative – of course I’ve read your file.” Not with the assumption that she’d ever be _working_ with the mysterious super powered woman from space who hadn’t been heard from since 1995, but still. “You really don’t remember any of your time on Earth?”

“I remember a lot more now than I did when I first came back,” Carol says, a pensive look on her face. “Back then it was just random flashes, moments of a life I had no idea I’d lived. The weirdest things would spark memories, but it was a long time before I could believe that any of them were real, that they’d actually happened. I’d lived lives as two different people, and it was hard to put those two parts of me together, to figure out who I really was, underneath it all.”

“I get that.” It’s startlingly similar to Natasha’s past, to trying to consolidate her life as an assassin with her life as a SHIELD agent, trying to decide what parts of her were real and what parts of her the Red Room had created. “I barely recognize the person I used to be.”

“See, this is bringing us closer together already,” Carol says, and somehow, she manages to look aloof even when she’s opening herself up. “We have a lot in common, Romanoff.”

“Oh yeah? So before when you rattled off that list of my many terrible qualities, were you just talking about yourself?”

“No, those points still stand,” Carol says, smirking, and Natasha has to fight the urge to kick her under the table. “But I lost someone to Thanos, too. When I was human, I… I had someone. And she had a kid with an asshole who didn’t stick around, so I stepped up and I loved that kid like she was my own, and then I got blown up in a freak explosion and I… forgot everything. _Everything_. I came back seven years later and she thought she had me back but I barely knew who she was. Some memories came back, but others didn’t, and I think it would’ve been kinder of me to stay away from them both but I could never let them go. I kept coming back, whenever I could, to that quiet little corner of Louisiana. Before I came here to see you after Fury’s pager went off, I went there, but there was… there was nobody there.”

“Jesus, Danvers, I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I guess that explains why you were so eager to help us kill Thanos.”

“He’s lucky Thor got there first – I wouldn’t have done it so quickly.” Carol’s hand glows as she grips her glass tightly, a rare slip of her careful control, but Natasha knows the feeling – she’s trained in torture, and she would’ve loved nothing more than the time to push Thanos to breaking point. “I want you to know that I haven’t given up, I’m still searching for a way to reverse it. To bring Maria and Monica back home.”

It takes Natasha a moment to realize that it’s not _her_ Maria that Carol means, and she smiles in spite of herself. “I haven’t given up, either. And we _do_ seem to have a lot in common, Danvers – I’m trying to bring back a Maria, too.”

They sit and trade stories until the bottle of vodka is empty, and then they just about manage to drag themselves down the hall and into their rooms with wobbly legs and dizzy heads. It’s the first time that Natasha has had fun in a while, one of the rare moments of light in this new world.

She’s lost a lot but she hasn’t lost everything, still has a family and friends and she thinks that that might just be enough to keep her going until she reaches the light at the end of the tunnel, until she has Maria back in her arms again, because she will _never_ give up searching, and she’s relieved to know that she’s not the only one.

She’s not alone, even if it feels like it sometimes, and it’s the first time in a long time that she manages to sleep for more than just a few restless hours.

***

Natasha is nothing if not an overachiever, so she makes sure that the first time she needs to use the medbay on the Helicarrier, she’s only a breath away from death.

The mission had seemed innocuous enough, a simple data retrieval, but it turned into an ambush that left her fighting for her life, and she’d taken three bullets before Clint managed to find her an escape route and get her to safety.

She remembers nothing of the journey back to Helicarrier, though later Clint tells her that she’d been bleeding out on the floor of the Quinjet, dizzy and delirious, and – Natasha is certain he’s lying about this part, but he swears it’s true, and she knows she will never hear the end of it either way – telling him all about how amazing Maria was.

She wakes to the sound of beeping machines, a needle sticking out of her arm, and her primary reaction is _panic_ – she’s not somewhere she recognizes, has no idea how she got there, and adrenaline floods her veins and makes her heart pound, and she’s halfway out of the bed before a strong arm is settling against her sternum and pressing her down.

Natasha fights against it, ignores the tearing of her stitches, and lashes out at the person restraining her, fist connecting with their face.

“Jesus Christ, Natasha, will you just - ” The voice is familiar, and Natasha immediately freezes, blinks through the haze of fear that’s tinted her vision in red, and finds Maria hovering over her, lip split from the force of Natasha’s punch. “Calm _down_.”

“I-I’m sorry.” Natasha forces herself to relax, even though her muscles are tense and her brain is screaming for her to run. “I didn’t… I didn’t know where I was.”

A doctor bursts through the curtains shielding Natasha’s bed, a nurse in tow, and Maria quickly shakes her head and gestures for them to leave them alone.

“But the stitches…” He glances towards Natasha’s shoulder, and she looks down and sees blood seeping into the material of her hospital gown, red and vivid against the flimsy white material.

“I’ll see to it,” Maria says, and there’s a crackle of a command in her voice – she’s rising up the ranks, and Natasha knows that Maria is going to go far. “Just get out of here.”

He looks doubtful, but he does as he’s told, the curtain swishing back into place behind them and leaving them alone. Maria’s hands are gentle as they run down Natasha’s arms, and it’s only when she unfurls Natasha’s fingers that she realizes that she’s clenched her hands into fists in her lap.

“You’re okay,” Maria says, her voice soft and quiet, and she reaches for Natasha’s jaw, tilting her head so that their eyes meet. “I don’t know where you went, but you’re not there anymore. You’re safe.”

They’ve shared a bed dozens of times, but Maria has yet to see Natasha after a nightmare – something that Natasha knows is coming, because she can only hold them at bay for so long before they start to creep back into the edges of her mind – but this is close.

She’d expected Maria to shy away, to ignore it, to not know how to deal with her, but Natasha thinks she’s doing a pretty good job so far, and Natasha thinks she might know exactly what Natasha is feeling, wonders if the scars of her military work lingered the same way Natasha’s past haunted her.

“Do you remember what happened?” Maria asks, and she helps Natasha sit up in the bed, propping her up with a few pillows. “How you ended up here?”

“We were ambushed.” It’s a little fuzzy, but Natasha vaguely remembers the details, the searing pain of the bullets tearing through her tactical suit. “How long have I been out?”

“Couple days.” Maria leaves her side only long enough to grab some medical supplies, and then she settles down in the chair she must’ve jumped out of to hold Natasha at bay.

“Have… have you been here the whole time?”

“I’ve been in and out,” Maria replies, not looking Natasha in the eye as she slips on a pair of gloves, and Natasha wonders if she’s lying, if she’s been spending hours by Natasha’s bedside, wonders what the doctors think of them visiting one another when they’ve both been injured, and decides that she doesn’t care.

“I’m sorry about your lip.” Natasha’s sheepish as she looks at Maria’s mouth – it’s a little swollen, and Maria swipes away the beads of blood with the collar of her shirt.

“It’s okay.” Maria shrugs. “Besides – it’s not like it’s the worst injury you’ve ever given me.”

“Probably the least fun, though,” Natasha says, her smirk wicked, and Maria rolls her eyes.

“Gown off, please.”

“Agent Hill, there are people around.”

“Natasha…” Maria’s voice holds just a hint of warning, and Natasha smiles as she does as she’s told, yanking at the flimsy tie around the back of her neck and allowing the gown to fall down to her waist, unable to stop a shiver as her skin is exposed to the cool air. “I’m going to have to re-do your stiches,” Maria tuts as she peels back the gauze tapped over her shoulder. “I can’t believe you tore these after being awake for about three seconds.”

Natasha ignores her in favor of taking stock of her other injuries – the gauze taped to her stomach is still white, so those stitches must be intact, as are the ones closing the other bullet wound just underneath her right collarbone.

She hisses as Maria swipes antiseptic along the open wound in her shoulder, and receives a muttered “don’t be such a baby” for her troubles.

She turns her head towards Maria as she starts to close her up – she’s sitting close, her head bent over Natasha’s arm, brows creased in concentration and her tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth. There are bags under her eyes, her eyelashes casting a long shadow over the sharp angle of her cheekbones, and Natasha allows herself to drink Maria in like she wouldn’t normally dare, thinks that Maria is beautiful, even under the glow of the medbay’s harsh fluorescent lighting.

“Stop staring,” Maria murmurs, without lifting her eyes from Natasha’s shoulder. “It’s distracting.”

“Stop getting distracted,” Natasha counters, and Maria’s sigh is one of exasperation – Natasha knows she can be annoying, but Maria should’ve known it, too, from their first encounter, so she knew exactly what she was getting into when she slipped into Natasha’s shower stall.

“If you end up with a wicked looking scar, it’s your fault.”

“I’m not even doing anything distracting,” Natasha huffs, and then she smirks, carefully not to jostle Maria when she uses her uninjured arm to stroke down the side of Maria’s neck, watches as her eyes start to flutter closed.

“Natasha.”

There’s that warning note again, only this time, Natasha doesn’t feel like obeying, traces her fingers higher and starts to play with the thin strands of hair at the back of Maria’s neck, and feels Maria’s breath stutter against her skin.

“Do you _want_ me to stab you?”

“Kinky,” Natasha says, enjoying the way Maria’s eyes grow hooded as she tugs the tie out of Maria’s hair.

“Natash – fuck.” Maria swears when Natasha tugs at her hair, but Natasha doesn’t stop. She’s disappointed, for a moment, when Maria finishes the sutures without so much as faltering, but then she’s kissing Natasha, hot and dirty, and she hisses when Natasha nips at her bruised bottom lip, her hand falling to Natasha’s thigh, nails digging into her skin. “We can’t do this here,” Maria says, when she pulls away, her breathing ragged, Natasha focusing on trying to keep her heartbeat even so Maria doesn’t get the satisfaction of hearing how Natasha reacts to her.

“ _You_ were the one who kissed me,” Natasha accuses, stretching back on the bed and smirking when Maria’s eyes flit down to take in the sight of her exposed chest.

“Oh please, you practically goaded me into it.” Maria cuts out a new piece of gauze to cover her stitches as Natasha admires her handiwork.

“Not bad,” she says, and she pouts when Maria presses the bandage a little hard into her skin as she’s taping the edges. “ _Ow_.”

“Please. That didn’t hurt.”

“It did – maybe you should kiss it better.”

“I am not letting you rip those again,” Maria says, voice stern as she sets everything aside and snaps off her gloves.

“Well, then how about you kiss my - ”

“Nat?” Clint’s voice calls through the curtain, cutting her off. “They said you were awake, can I come in?”

“Sure.”

“You do know you’re still…” Maria waves towards Natasha’s bare chest as the curtain starts to open, but Natasha just winks.

“How are you - ” Clint cuts off with a shriek as he realizes that Natasha is half-naked, spinning around so fast that he nearly falls straight back through the curtain. “You are _naked_.”

“What’s the matter, Clint?” Natasha asks, and she’s laughing so hard it hurts but god, it’s worth it, and she glances at Maria and finds her pressing her lips together to try and hide a smile. “You never seen a pair of tits before?”

“Yes, but…” He trails off, shuffling his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t want to see _your_ tits. No offence. To either of you.”

“Why would that offend me?” Maria asks, and her voice is sharp, but when Natasha looks at her, her eyes are sparkling with mirth. “You trying to imply something, Barton?”

“N-no, that’s not what I… I just…” He sounds like he’s desperately trying to find the right words, and Natasha wishes she could see his face.

“Just _what_ , Barton?” Maria snaps, and Natasha doesn’t think she’s ever since Clint quite so squirmy.

“You know what, I’m going to come back later,” he decides, nodding to himself. “I’m glad you’re feeling better Tasha, bye.” His words run together as he makes a break for freedom, scurrying back through the curtain, Natasha’s laughter probably ringing in his ears.

“Oh, I am never letting him forget this,” Natasha decides, her smile wide as she watches the curtain swish back into place behind him. “Thanks for the assist. He definitely knows we’re sleeping together now, though.”

“Oh, I know,” Maria says, relaxing back in the chair beside Natasha’s bed. “He gave himself away when he brought you in.”

“What happened?” Natasha asks, intrigued – she wants to know if Clint put his foot in it so she can tease him mercilessly about it in the future.

“It was late when you were brought in,” Maria explains, kicking up her feet onto the edge of Natasha’s bed. “And Barton wasn’t sure if you were going to make it.” Something flashes through Maria’s eyes, and Natasha wonders if she’d thought the same, if she’d been seized with the same quiet panic that Natasha had felt, when Maria had been lying in her place. “I was asleep, but he took it upon himself to come and get me, because he ‘thought I’d want to see you’. When I asked him _why_ he thought I’d be so desperate to rush to your bedside, he got as squirrelly as he was just then.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Why would it?” Maria asks, eyes curious as they meet Natasha’s.

“I dunno.” Natasha lifts her shoulders in a shrug and winces. “You strike me as a private person.”

“Well, I don’t think Barton’s going to go around telling anyone,” Maria says, smirking. “After he woke me, I threatened to relieve him of some of his appendages.”

“A woman after my heart,” Natasha says, and Maria can’t quite meet her gaze. “Stay with me?” She asks, because, though she’ll never admit it, she sleeps better when she’s wrapped around Maria Hill.

“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” Maria says, “but I’m not getting in that bed with you.”

“Why not?”

“For one, I doubt we’ll both fit, and for another, you need rest, and I don’t trust you to keep your hands to yourself.”

“I can behave.”

“You have proven time and time again that you _cannot_ , Romanoff.”

“Fine,” Natasha huffs, because she and Maria are both as stubborn as each other, and she knows they could argue about it for hours but she’s _tired_ , even though she knows she’s been sleeping for days. She removes the pillows that were propping her up and re-fastens her gown before she curls up, lying on her un-injured shoulder and facing Maria. “You should get some rest, too. You look tired.”

“Gee, thanks.” Maria doesn’t look too offended, though, folding her arms across her chest, her boots on the edge of Natasha’s bed. “You’re just full of compliments.”

“When was the last time you got more than a few hours’ sleep?”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Busy sitting in that chair?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I _do_ have a job to do, you know.” Maria sounds defensive, and Natasha just blinks at her until she sighs. “I was worried about you,” she admits, her voice quiet, her eyes focused on a spot just to the left of Natasha’s face. “You were in pretty bad shape when they brought you in.”

“It’ll take more than a few bullets to stop me.” Natasha’s eyes start to flutter closed, sleep calling out to her, and she relaxes further into the uncomfortable cot, clutching the scratchy blanket close. “I’m not that easy to kill.”

“But you’re not invincible.” Maria speaks so quietly that Natasha barely hears her, and she wonders if she’s supposed to at all.

“I told you I’d keep coming back to you,” Natasha says, the words muffled by the pillow her cheek is pressed against. “And I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

***

Five years pass before Scott Lang resurfaces and turns Natasha’s world upside down.

She listens to him talk and she tries to taper the faint stirrings of hope that rise in her chest, because she’s been burned too many times before to truly allow herself to believe that this time, they might actually succeed.

But just because she’s trying to manage her expectations doesn’t mean that she won’t throw herself into trying to find a solution. She’s there when they approach Tony, and then Bruce, makes sure she’s watching the first time that they attempt to send Scott back in time, feels her hope start to wither and die when it isn’t a success.

And then Tony swoops in to save the day, like he’s prone to do, and Natasha starts to really believe that maybe they _can_ do this, after all.

But they need to get the team back together first, and Natasha knows she has to be the one to bring in Clint, knows she’ll be the only one who’ll be able to get close enough to be able to convince him to come home.

She finds him in the rain in Tokyo, a broken man. It’s been years since they’d last seen one another – he’d slipped off the grid soon after they’d returned from killing Thanos, and while Natasha has been tracking him, she’d long ago given up on trying to reach out.

She looks at him, blood on his hands, standing over the latest in his long line of victims, and knows that she could easily be in his place. His grief had overwhelmed him, to the point where killing was the only thing that could dull the pain, even just for a little while, lashing out at the less deserving who had survived when so many innocent souls hadn’t.

That could be her, because the impulse to lash out, to gain some semblance of control in this new life, had nearly overwhelmed her, too. But she’d thought of Maria, wondered what she would do, in Natasha’s place, and known that she had to walk a different path, had chosen leadership, instead.

“Don’t give me false hope,” Clint says, with a haunted look in his eyes that Natasha knows is echoed in her own.

“I’m not.” She steps closer to him, until she’s shielding the both of them from the pouring rain. “I really think this’ll work. That we’ll get them back.”

He’s the only one who truly knows the depth of what Natasha had lost, who understands what he’s going through, and she reaches for his hand and squeezes, and knows that, whatever happens, they’ll get through it together.

She returns back to the Avengers facility with Clint in tow, and once they gang is all back together, they start to plan. Natasha listens carefully to the others recount their stories of experiencing the stones, makes meticulous notes and together, they come up with a strategy to retrieve them.

When the Pym particles are pressed into her hand, and she zips up the suit that’s going to help her survive in the quantum realm, she feels a flutter of anticipation stir in her stomach.

For the first time, she allows herself to believe that this time, they’re going to be successful, that they’re going to do this, and soon, she’ll have Maria back in her arms for good.

***

Weeks pass, turn into months, and months turn into years, and through it all, she and Maria remain strong.

Just like she’d always known she would, Maria is quick to climb the ranks at SHIELD, and while many are surprised when Fury chooses her as his Deputy Director – she is young, compared to her competition, but she’s battle-tested, she’s an excellent leader, smart as a whip and unafraid to stand up for what she believes in, even if the person she’s standing up to is the Director of SHIELD himself – Natasha isn’t, because she’s always known that Maria is due for bigger and better things.

Natasha is given more trust, a longer rein, and she and Clint quickly become one of SHIELD’s greatest task forces. They’re unstoppable, whether they’re deep uncover (and that, truly, is where Natasha excels, though its often those missions that keep her away from Maria the longest) and Natasha trusts him with her life, thinks of him like the annoying older brother she’d never had.

She knows he trusts her when he introduces her to his wife.

He drops this bombshell after they’ve been working together for _years_ , and it isn’t like she hasn’t noticed him disappearing off the Helicarrier whenever they’re between missions, but she didn’t think he had a wife waiting for him at home, didn’t even know that he _had_ a home.

But one day, after a long mission in Budapest, he invites her to go with him, and Maria is away in D.C. with Fury so she agrees, and she’s sure her jaw hits the floor when he’s set upon by a wobbling toddler when they step through the door of the homestead.

“You must be Natasha.” A woman with a baby bump and a kind smile appears from out of the living room, and Natasha watches, stunned, as Clint scoops up the toddler and presses a kiss to the woman’s cheek. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I have heard absolutely _nothing_ about you.” She glares at Clint, who looks at her sheepishly.

“Sorry, Tasha.” He does look it, but she’s not going to let him off the hook quite so easily. “But this is all off the books – it was the only way I’d agree to join SHIELD. Only Fury knows about this place and my family. Well.” He shrugs, and offers her a tentative smile. “Fury and now you. This is Laura.” He gestures towards the brunette, and Natasha stiffens as she’s swept into a hug. “And this,” he continues, nudging the giggling boy on his hip. “Is Cooper.”

“Are you guys hungry?” Laura asks, beckoning Natasha into the living room. “Thirsty? Clint said you’d only just gotten back from Europe.”

“A shower would be good,” Natasha says, because it’s been a couple of days since she’d last had the opportunity, and she could use a little time and space to recover from this bombshell that Clint’s just dropped her – she thought she knew him well, and it stings, a little, to know that he’s kept a part of himself from her all this time, when she’s been so open with him, even if she understands why he’d done it.

“Of course, I’ll show you to the guest room.” Laura gestures towards the stairs, and Natasha trails in her wake, trying not to be too obviously nosey as she walks through the halls. “I know this is probably a bit of a surprise to you,” Laura says, pausing outside of a closed door upstairs. “Clint’s been really cut up about keeping this from you.”

“He really talks about me?”

“Only all the time.” Laura’s smile is fond, and she doesn’t look at all put out to have an assassin in her home, around her children, and Natasha decides then and there that she likes her. “Before he met you, he… he never really talked about work a lot. I don’t think he really enjoyed it, but you… he’s changed, since he brought you in. He doesn’t have many friends, so I’m glad he has you. And I’m glad to know that there’s someone watching his back.”

“He’s my partner,” Natasha says, folding her arms across her chest as she leans a shoulder against the wall. “He’s saved my ass more times than I can count – I’ve always got his back.”

Laura leaves her be after she’s shown Natasha the bathroom, and she takes some precious time to herself – it’s not something she gets often, and she revels in it, pads downstairs some time later to the smell of something delicious, and she smiles gratefully when Laura hands her a beer.

It’s her preferred brand, and Natasha takes it out onto the deck where Clint is sitting, his son playing at his feet.

“I can’t believe you kept this from me for so long.” Natasha knocks her shoulder into his, smirking when he winces.

“I really am sorry, Tasha.” He leans against her, his eyes fond as he watches Cooper bang a toy dinosaur against the floor. “I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while, but I… I was pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me unless I showed you, and this was the first chance I got.”

“It’s okay.” She’s already forgiven him. “I get why you did it.”

“And you don’t have to stay, if you’re uncomfortable here. I just wanted you to meet them.”

“Are you kidding? From the smell of it, your wife is an amazing cook, and I bet she can tell me some highly embarrassing stories that I can add to my collection.”

“No,” Clint groans, his head thumping back against the wall behind them. “I’m not letting that happen. I’m not leaving the two of you unsupervised.”

“Oh yeah? And just how are you planning on stopping me?” She asks, quirking an eyebrow – he still can’t best her on the training mat, much to his chagrin.

“I’ll find a way.”

“No, you won’t. God, I’m going to get so much ammunition.” She’s gleeful at the mere thought. “And I bet she thinks you’re some hotshot, unflappable government agent, doesn’t she? Wait until she hears about how just one look from Maria can make you nearly pee your pants.” 

“She is _scary_!” Clint exclaims, and though he’s relaxed more and more around Maria as time has gone on, as she and Natasha have grown closer, she can still render him silent with a well-timed glare. “She’s threatened to shoot me on more than one occasion.”

“Usually only when you deserve it,” Natasha says, draining the last of her beer. “And anyway, _I_ threaten to shoot you all the time.”

“Yes, but I can tell when you’re joking.”

Laura calls them inside for dinner, and true to her word, Natasha manages to weasel out several stories that make Clint’s head thud down onto the table by the time they’ve all finished eating, and he’s quick to escape from their teasing by putting his son to bed.

Natasha’s enjoying herself, and when her phone rings a couple of hours later, she smiles when she glances at the screen and sees Maria’s name.

“I think I’ll head to bed,” Natasha decides, before she answers the call – aside from a brief ‘the mission went fine and I didn’t come back with any injuries this time’ call earlier that day, it’s been _weeks_ since they’d had a proper conversation, and Natasha wants the privacy. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”

“Please don’t have phone sex in my guest bedroom!” Clint calls after her, and Natasha flips him off over her shoulder as she presses the phone to her ear.

“Hi, beautiful.”

“Hi.” Maria sounds tired, and Natasha knows that she’s running herself ragged with this promotion, working longer hours, but she also knows that Maria loves her job, and wouldn’t change it for the world. “Enjoying being back on the Helicarrier?”

“I’m not actually on it.” Natasha moves silently up the stairs and into the guestroom, wary of waking the sleeping two-year old a few doors down.

“Oh?”

“Clint wanted to show me something, so I’m spending a few days with him.” She doesn’t want to lie to Maria, but she doesn’t want to break Clint’s trust, either, so she settles with an element of the truth, instead, and knows that both of them would understand her reasoning.

“Should I be worried?” Maria teases, and Natasha rolls her eyes as she sheds her clothes and pulls on her pajamas before slipping under the covers.

“You caught me – me and Barton have been sleeping together this whole time.”

“I _knew_ it.” There’s a smile in her voice, and if Natasha closes her eyes, she can almost pretend that Maria is spread out beside her.

“How is D.C.?”

“God, it’s so boring,” Maria groans, and Natasha knows that of all the parts of her new job, it’s the politics that she likes the least. “I _hate_ congress.”

“Do you have to wear a suit?”

“Yes.”

“Are you wearing one right now?” Natasha loves Maria in her SHIELD uniform, but seeing her in formalwear is something else entirely, and the first time she’d seen Maria in a suit, when she’d surprised her one night at her apartment after some press something or other Fury had made her go to, it had driven Natasha wild.

“No. I’m in bed, Nat, I took the damn thing off the second I walked through the door.”

“That’s no fun.” Natasha pouts, even though Maria can’t see her. “So, what _are_ you wearing?”

“Really?” Maria laughs, and Natasha’s pout deepens.

“Come on, Maria, I haven’t seen you in weeks, I haven’t heard your voice in almost as long. A girl has needs – help me out here.”

“I’m wearing an old, ratty t-shirt and my underwear, it’s not very sexy.”

“I can work with it.”

Maria’s laugh sounds in her ear again, only this time it’s a little husky, and Natasha’s stomach twists. “What are _you_ wearing?”

“Underwear and one of the shirts I stole from you.” Natasha likes the way that they’re a little too big, a little too long, likes the way they smell of Maria’s laundry detergent, how they remind her of home, no matter how many weeks she has to spend away.

“I’m going to run out of clothes soon.”

“Oh, no, what a travesty,” Natasha says, her voice flat, and she can _hear_ Maria rolling her eyes.

“Has that been your plan all along?”

“Maybe. I _do_ like you naked.” Natasha hums as she imagines Maria sans any clothing. “In fact, I’m thinking about you naked right now.”

“Oh yeah?” Maria’s voice lowers in pitch, and god, it’s been too long since Natasha’s been able to get her hands on Maria. “Tell me about it.”

“Mm, I’m thinking about what I’m going to do to you when I see you again.” Natasha trails her free hand down her body, cups her breast and teases at her nipple until it’s a stiff peak. “We’re in your apartment, in your bedroom, against the wall.”

It’s Maria’s place, but Natasha thinks that she and Maria probably spend an equal amount of time, there – it’s where Natasha goes when she wants a break from the Helicarrier, and sometimes she goes there even when she knows Maria is away.

“I want to tease you until you’re begging for me to touch you.” Begging isn’t something either of them do easily, but they both revel in the challenge of driving the other to the point of desperation, when they have the time. “And then I’ll get you to ride my tongue until your knees are shaking and you can’t hold yourself up any more, but I won’t stop – I’ll fuck you on the floor until you can’t take it anymore.”

“Fuck, Natasha.” Maria’s breathing is ragged, and Natasha slides a hand beneath the waistband of her underwear.

She’s already wet, her fingers slipping across her clit, and she moans as she starts drawing lazy circles, her hips rocking against her hand.

“I wish you were with me right now,” Natasha says, her voice rough. “I wish it was you touching me.”

“It will be soon.” There’s a hitch in Maria’s breathing that tells Natasha that she’s touching herself, too, and she sighs, closing her eyes and listening to the noises Maria makes in her ear and pretending that she’s there pressed against her, instead.

It doesn’t take much to push Natasha over the edge – she comes with two fingers buried in wet heat and Maria’s name on her lips, Maria following while Natasha is still riding the aftershocks, whining in the back of her throat, and Natasha hopes it isn’t long before they’re re-united, wants to _feel_ Maria come undone around her, not just hear her.

“I miss you,” Natasha says, once her breathing has evened out, curled up on her side with the phone still pressed to her ear, and it’s easy for her to say, in the muted darkness of her room for the next few days, grows easier for her to be more open and vulnerable with Maria each and every day.

“I miss you, too.”

Natasha can hear the smile in Maria’s voice, and she’d never expected to feel so deeply for another person, didn’t know she was capable of it, even, but she’s had years with Maria never far from her side, and she can’t imagine a life without her in it.

She doesn’t know when that happened, but she knows she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She doesn’t think she and Maria will ever have a dynamic like Clint and Laura – there will be no homestead, no marriage, no kids, but Natasha thinks that that’s not something that she and Maria need or want in order to be happy.

They have each other, and Natasha knows that for her, at least, that’s enough.

***

It’s the second time Natasha’s been to space, and Maria is definitely going to be jealous when they bring her back.

Vormir is unlike either of the planets Natasha has seen, the sky dark and the terrain mountainous, and Natasha feels a flutter of trepidation stir in her stomach as she and Clint begin to climb.

It only grows when she hears “a soul for a soul” and of course, of _course_ she and Clint would be the ones that get stuck on the suicide mission, and how had she not figured this out before?

It’s not _fair_ – Natasha’s desperation to get Maria back is matched only by Clint’s for Laura and his kids, and how cruel is it that they have to choose which one will get their happy ending, and which one isn’t going to make it out alive?

Clint is her best friend, has been by her side all these years, and if she wants to see Maria again, then it means she can never see _him_ again, and Natasha thinks of Laura and those poor kids and she knows what she had to do.

She’d made a promise – whatever it takes, has promised Maria time and time again that she’d get her back, and if doing that means that Natasha has to lay down her life… if she knows that Maria is out there, somewhere, if she knows that she can bring them all back, then she thinks the sacrifice will be worth it, in the end.

It’s not what she wanted, but Natasha has had a life filled with so many things that she thought she’d never get to have. She’s fallen in love, she’s felt that love returned, she’s felt light and laughter and happiness, she’s lived far longer than she ever thought she would.

But Clint is almost as stubborn as her, and their eyes meet over their clasped hands and she knows he’s thinking the same thing she is, that it’s got to be _him_ that doesn’t make it through this alive, and god damn him, he’s going to make this even harder than it’s already going to be.

“I can’t let you do this, Tasha,” Clint says, his hand still wrapped in both of hers. “You think Maria is going to let me live when she comes back and you’re not there?”

“You think Laura will?” Natasha counters, her throat tight with tears. “You have kids, Clint, they need you.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “After the things I’ve done, these past five years… I don’t know how I could look them in the eye. They deserve better than me.”

“No they don’t.”

“They _do_. Me and Laura, we’ve had a good run, we’ve had years to be together, to be happy. You and Maria… you never had that, Tasha.”

“Yes we _did_.”

“No.” He shakes his head again, his free hand cupping the side of her face. “You didn’t. You had fragments of a life, spread out over the past ten years, but you deserve more than that. She made you happy, and you deserve to have more time. Let me give you that.”

“No, _you_ let _me_ give Cooper, Lila and Nate their father back. Let me give Laura her husband back. She’ll never forgive me if I let you do this. Maria… Maria will understand.” Natasha hopes she will, anyway, hopes that she’ll be able to move on, hopes that she’ll be able to live more than the shadow of the life Natasha has led for the past five years.

Natasha was never meant to be _able_ to fall in love, and she supposes it’s kind of ironic, that her happy ending is in her grasp, but she’s going to have to throw it all away.

“No, she won’t.” Clint says, and he rests his forehead against hers, and Natasha thinks she might finally be getting through to him. “And I’m not stupid – I know you’re never going to _let_ me do this.”

He has her on the ground before she can even blink – it’s the first time he’s ever managed to surprise her, and Natasha is _furious_ , scrambles to her feet and hurries after him as he runs for the cliff’s edge.

Natasha never thought she’d be fighting with Clint for who got the right to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, but then a lot of unexpected things have happened to her ever since the day Clint Barton had walked into her life.

The fight is scrappy, messy, both of them desperate not to let to other win, not to have to be the one who makes it home to tell the others loved ones that they didn’t make it, and Natasha thinks that she’s won when she makes the leap over the cliff’s edge, the wind flying through her hair.

But Clint follows, secures Natasha to the cliff, and Natasha realizes, with a sickening feeling in her stomach, that her hand on his wrist is the only thing keeping him from falling, and she knows she’s not strong enough to hold his weight for long.

“Let me go,” he says, and Natasha shakes her head, digging her nails into the skin of his arm, tears stinging at her eyes. “Let me go, Tasha, it’s okay.”

“No it’s not.” Her arm starts to shake, and Clint’s smile is soft and sad as he looks up at her. “Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me tell Laura that you’re not coming back.”

“Just… just tell them all how much I loved them. Don’t let them forget about me.”

“Clint - ”

“It’s okay, Tasha. I’ll be okay.” He doesn’t look scared, and Natasha thinks it should be her, he should be the one to make it – he’s the one who gave her a second chance at life, and it’s her turn to give him one in return. “Promise me you’ll find Maria and you’ll make it work, okay? Promise me you’ll still be Auntie Nat, that you’ll teach them how to shoot a bow and arrow.”

“I won’t be as good a teacher as you.”

“Promise me,” he says, as Natasha’s grip starts to slip, and she knows that she can’t hold him for much longer.

“I promise.”

He smiles, before he’s twisting, kicking off the wall, the force breaking Natasha’s hold and sending him tumbling to the ground below, and Natasha chokes on a sob and turns her face away, doesn’t want to see his body lying, bloodied and broken, on the jagged rocks below.

She wakes up in a shallow pool of water some time later, with the soul stone in her pocket and a heavy feeling in her heart, more determined than ever to get back home, to bring the others back and make sure that Clint’s sacrifice isn’t in vain.

***

Natasha’s longest undercover assignment is spent as Natalie Rushman, infiltrating Stark Industries and getting close to the man himself.

Fury had pitched it to her directly, knowing it was her specialty, and insisting it was an important mission, even though Natasha doesn’t know why a playboy with too much money to spare is so high up on Fury’s radar, but she’s not one to question her orders.

“Do you want me to sleep with him?” Natasha asks, flipping through the file that Fury hands her with all the details of her cover, and raising an eyebrow at the expertly photoshopped modelling photographs contained within.

“That’s entirely up to you,” Fury says with a shrug. “So long as you get close to him, I don’t care what you do. Your first day is tomorrow.”

It isn’t long for her to prepare, but Natasha’s nothing if not efficient when she sets her mind to something. She takes the file back to her room, and she isn’t surprised when there’s a knock on her door a little while later.

“That the Stark assignment?” Maria asks, nodding towards the papers in Natasha’s lap as she sits next to Natasha on the bed, kicking off her shoes.

“Mm.” Natasha has read enough to know what kind of persona she’s going to have to sink in to for the next few months. It’s one she’s all too familiar with, the seductress who wraps their mark around their little finger – but it’s not one she’s had to perform recently. “You put me up for this?”

“Fury and I thought you were the best fit.” Maria doesn’t look particularly happy about it, but Natasha knows she’ll always do what’s best for SHIELD, and Natasha is undoubtedly the best suited for this kind of work, with her background.

“Does it bother you?” Natasha asks, without looking at Maria’s face as she gathers up the papers and puts them neatly back into the file and setting it on her bedside table.

“The thought of a guy like Stark ogling you?” Maria’s jaw clenches, and Natasha reaches out a hand to squeeze her thigh. “Of course it does. Does it not bother _you_?”

“It’s just another mission,” Natasha says with a shrug. “I’m kind of used to it.”

“But you _shouldn’t_ be.” Maria’s voice shakes, her eyes dark, and Natasha doesn’t talk about her past often but Maria knows all of the worst parts, how many marks she’s had to let use and abuse her over the years, how Maria is one of the few people that she’s been with just because she _wanted_ to. “You never should have had to go through that.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” Natasha presses up against Maria’s side, and burrows in close when Maria lifts her arm to wrap it around Natasha’s shoulder. “That chapter of my life is over.”

“Not if we’re sending you on missions like that.” Maria glances towards the file, contempt in her eyes. “How does that make us any better than them?”

“Because you’re giving me a choice,” Natasha says, her voice soft. “I know I could get out of this, if I really wanted to. And I know that fucking Stark isn’t going to be considered a necessity.” She sees Maria flinch, and squeezes her thigh. “I’m not going to, by the way.” Natasha thinks it’s important that Maria knows this – they’ve never said they’re exclusive, but Natasha knows neither of them has any interest in anyone else, and as much as she thinks Maria would say it doesn’t count if it’s for a mission, just the mere thought feels wrong in a way that makes her uncomfortable. “Just making him _want_ to will get him exactly where I want him.”

“That’s still not a position I’m happy about putting you in.”

“It’s what I’m good at.” Natasha shrugs. “It’s what I was trained for, and yeah, I do have a lot of regrets, but… if my past had been different, I never would’ve ended up here, and you’d still have that stick up your butt because you weren’t getting laid.”

“Fuck you,” Maria says, but she’s laughing, and she moves to tickle Natasha and doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest when Natasha flips Maria onto her back and pins her wrists on either side of her head. “I did not have a stick up my butt.”

“Yes, you did. But it’s okay – it turned me on.”

“ _Anything_ turns you on.”

“Just you,” Natasha says, her voice quiet and soft, and she kisses Maria to cover up how vulnerable the admission makes her feel.

Hours later, when they’re tangled up together naked under Natasha’s sheets, Maria turns towards her, blue eyes bright even in the darkness of Natasha’s room, her fingers tracing errant patterns over Natasha’s skin.

“Why did you start sleeping with me?” She asks, her eyes on her hand, drawing a spiral over Natasha’s ribcage.

“I told you – you really looked like you needed to get laid.” Natasha keeps her voice serious, and she grins when Maria shoves her, her shoulder colliding with the wall at her back. “And what other sane reaction is there to a gorgeous naked woman walking into your shower?”

“Oh, so you _weren’t_ trying to drive me crazy for the weeks leading up to that?”

“No, I definitely was.” Natasha allows Maria to pull her closer, and presses their foreheads together. “Expert in seduction, remember? You never stood a chance.”

“But why me? You… you could’ve chosen anyone on this carrier.”

“I didn’t want anyone else on this carrier,” Natasha replies, playing with a strand of Maria’s hair. “Honestly? You caught my eye my first day here – you were the only one who didn’t look away when their eyes met mine. And you were the only one stupid enough to step into the ring with the Black Widow – I doubt if there was anyone else in that training room that day, they would’ve accepted the challenge.”

“That would’ve been the smart thing to do – you kicked my ass.”

“You lasted longer than I thought you would. And then you just… walked away from me after. You seemed completely disinterested, even in the weeks after, and I wasn’t used to that. People usually give me what I want, no questions asked, but not you.”

“So I was a challenge?”

“I guess maybe it started off that way, yeah.” One of the things Natasha likes the most about Maria is that she knows she can be completely honest with her, that Maria can take it, won’t jump straight to offended. “But if that’s all it was, I wouldn’t have kept coming back.” She meets Maria’s gaze and holds it, shivers when her fingers curl around Natasha’s hip. “What about you? Why did you start sleeping with me?”

“Like I said – you drove me crazy until I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Okay, then why did you keep coming back?” She’s used to people getting what they want from her and then walking away once they’ve gotten off, but Maria never had.

“Natasha, have you _seen_ you? Like I could’ve ever stayed away. And don’t get me wrong, you’re a pain in the ass, but you’re _my_ pain in the ass.” The hand on her hip digs in, just a little, and Natasha has never liked possessive behavior but she thinks she doesn’t mind it if it’s coming from Maria. “I was done for that first sparring session – I looked up at you when you were straddling me on that mat and I knew you were going to ruin me.”

“You think I’ve ruined you?”

“For anyone else? Of course you have. Natasha, I-I…” Maria trails off, the words sticking in the back of her throat. “I really care about you.”

Natasha knows Maria well enough by now to know that isn’t what she planned to say. No, Natasha knows what she meant to say was ‘I love you’ but Maria doesn’t need to say it for Natasha to know, and Natasha doesn’t need to hear it – Maria says it every day, in the soft way she looks at Natasha, with the way she’s always finding an excuse to touch her, even if it’s only in the smallest of ways, in the way she’ll bring Natasha a coffee every day they’re both in the same place, even if she thinks that amount of milk and sweetener Natasha uses is an abomination.

“I really care about you, too.” Natasha holds Maria’s gaze as she says it, and she hopes Maria sees past it, sees what she really means, even if she still isn’t quite ready to say the words aloud. She hopes that Maria knows it, hopes she knows that Natasha’s never allowed anyone else to wrap an arm around her while she’s sleeping, or to see her after a nightmare, hopes she knows what Natasha is trying to say when she brings back Maria’s favorite items of food whenever she returns to the Helicarrier after a field mission and leaves them on her bed. “I’ll miss you, when I’m in California.”

She doesn’t know how long it’ll be, but she knows it isn’t a short assignment, that it could be months before she gets to spend the night with Maria again.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

She falls asleep in Maria’s arms, and the next morning she leaves for her new job at Stark Industries, with no idea that that this one mission will change the course of her life for good.

***

She arrives back in the present, and can only manage a small shake of her head when the others ask her why Clint isn’t with her.

At the very least, they have the rest of the stones, which means they have everything they need to undo all of Thanos’ wrongs.

She needs a minute, though, steps outside towards the lake, and isn’t surprised when the others start to follow her.

Steve is the first to approach, and Natasha falls in to him when he offers her a hug, though she doesn’t let any tears fall – she thinks she might have run out, on Vormir, doesn’t know if she has any left to give.

“He wouldn’t let me do it,” she says, the words muffled with her mouth pressed against Steve’s shoulder. “I tried to fight him, to let him to get me jump, but he… he wouldn’t let me.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Clint. And you.” Steve lets her step away, gives her a moment to gather herself as the others join them.

Thor seems to think that they can bring him back, but Natasha knows that they can’t. What had happened on Vormir can’t be undone, and she lets her frustration show in her voice when she snaps at him, because does he really think she’d be falling apart like this if she thought she was going to be able to see Clint again?

“We have to make it worth it,” Natasha says, her voice shaking. “His sacrifice has to _mean_ something. We have to get his family back.”

“We will,” Steve promises, and Natasha tells herself that she’ll have time to mourn afterwards – for now, they need to focus on their mission, on making their own infinity gauntlet, and bringing back the fallen.

Natasha can’t help with that, is happy to leave it to the more scientifically minded amongst them, and she doesn’t object when Bruce says he has to be the one to wield it. She braces herself beside Tony as Bruce readies himself, in a fighting stance even though she’s not really sure _what_ she’s going to need to fight.

She doesn’t breathe, the whole time Bruce struggles, doesn’t draw breath until after she’s snapped his fingers and fallen to the floor. She’s quick to kick the gauntlet away as it falls from his wrist, before falling to her knees along with the others beside Bruce, trying to assess the damage, her stomach turning at the smell of burning flesh.

She’s wondering how they’re supposed to know it worked when she feels her phone buzz in her pocket, and Natasha scrambles to reach it, and when she sees Maria’s names emblazoned on the screen she nearly sobs.

“Maria?” She presses the phone to her ear, her fingers shaking so badly that she can barely hold it, and she hurries away from the others, trying to gain some semblance of privacy. “Maria, are you okay?”

“Natasha.” It’s just her name, but the sound of Maria’s voice nearly sends Natasha falling to her knees, tears springing into her eyes but for the first time in so long, they’re happy and not sad. “I’m okay.”

“I’ve missed you so much.” Her voice is trembling, but Natasha doesn’t know how to stop it – in the background on Maria’s end of the call, she can hear Fury, is glad that Maria isn’t alone, that she has someone she trusts nearby. “Where are you?”

“I’m in - ”

But Natasha never finds out, because before Maria can tell her, a missile is fired through the roof of the facility, and then Natasha is falling, falling, falling through the floor, and everything goes black.

***

Natasha never expected that monitoring Tony Stark would lead to her becoming a part of a team of superheroes that saved the world but, well, since when has _anything_ in her life ever been remotely normal?

She doesn’t know how the boys are going to possibly put aside their egos in order to work together – something that she’s told Fury before, when she’d first learned of the Avengers Initiative and the fact that he was considering Stark of all people to play a key part.

Natasha herself isn’t used to working with others – Clint is her partner, but he’s the only one she works with, but now he’s gone, his mind overtaken by something none of them understand, and if Natasha has to play nice with Stark, Banner, Rogers and Thor to get him back, then she’ll do it with a smile, because Clint means the world to her, and she cannot face having to go to Laura and tell her that her husband isn’t coming home.

She figures, as she finds herself trapped below deck with the most dangerous member of the team, who she can see struggling for control, that it probably isn’t time for an ‘I told you so’.

In her ear, she hears Maria’s voice, breathes a sigh of relief to know that she’s okay and she’s safe on the flight deck, and Natasha tells Fury that she’s okay but really it’s Maria that she’s talking to.

Natasha honestly doesn’t know how she manages to stay alive – Banner is relentless, and she knows she’d be dead if not for Thor. She’s barely caught her breath when she hears Maria shout ‘grenade’ in her ear, and then she feels her blood turn to ice in her veins, her heart pounding too loud in her ears, and she doesn’t take another breath until she hears Maria’s voice again.

It’s a weakness, and one that Natasha tries very hard to push away as she drags herself to her feet to go in search of Clint. She can’t afford distractions, and neither can Maria, and maybe it’s a good thing that they’re rarely on a mission together, because Natasha panicking about Maria getting hurt isn’t going to do either of them any good.

It’s not the first time she and Clint have fought, and it won’t be the last, but it’s the first time since their first meeting that they’ve been on opposite sides. He’s yet to best her and even when she’s exhausted and injured, she has no intentions of letting him start now, even if she has to play a little dirty.

When he’s out cold she drags him to the medbay, ignoring the protests of her ankle, and only relaxes once she’s got him strapped the bed, doesn’t plan on letting him out of her sight anytime soon.

She’s patching herself up when the door slides open, and Natasha isn’t surprised to see Maria slipping through it.

She looks exhausted, grief in her eyes and a cut across her cheek, and she’s walking a little gingerly but she’s alive, she’s still breathing, and Natasha staggers to her feet so that she can wrap her arms around Maria’s neck.

She smells like blood and sweat and gunpowder, and Natasha draws comfort from it, from the beat of Maria’s heart, Natasha holding her so tight that she can feel it in her own chest.

“I’m sorry about Coulson,” she says, when she can bring herself to lean back. “He was a good agent.” Natasha has worked with him only a handful of times, but she knows that Maria had held him in high regard – an honor that very few SHIELD agents ever have bestowed upon them.

“Yeah, he was.” Maria sighs as she drops down into a chair, and Natasha follows, sitting in her lap. She needs the comfort of having Maria close, and she knows that their time together will be like many of their encounters on this Helicarrier – too brief, an interlude before the madness begins anew – and Natasha doesn’t want to waste a second of it.

“Are you okay?” Natasha asks, fingers gently prodding at the cut on Maria’s cheek.

“I’m okay.” Maria turns her head to kiss the palm of Natasha’s hand. “Just a few cuts and bruises. Are you?”

“I’ve had worse,” Natasha says with a shrug – her ankle will be fine soon, and her other injuries are mostly superficial. “I’ll be ready to go again soon.” She knows a bigger fight is coming – they both do – and Maria’s arms squeeze around Natasha a little tighter, because this the biggest foe they’ve ever faced.

Clint stirs, and Natasha sighs, knowing that their time together is almost up. She turns her head and captures Maria’s lips, kisses her hot and deep and hard, pours all her worry and her desperation into it, and only pulls away when they’re both dizzy, trying not to let herself think that it could be their last.

Maria goes back to Fury, and Natasha waits for Clint to wake, and she’s relieved to find that he’s back to his annoying self, with no brainwashing in sight. She thinks that this might bring them closer than ever – Natasha knows what he’s gone through, knows what it’s like to forget who you are, and he’d been the one to bring her back, to help her out of it and find herself again, and Natasha knows she will do the same for him.

She thinks that the scars of Loki’s magic will take a long time to heal, but hunting him down will make them both feel better. Natasha isn’t used to being a solider in a war, and she might not have enhanced abilities or super strength but she’s a damn good fighter and she thinks if there’s any fight for her to get involved in, it’s this one.

She doesn’t have time to speak to Maria before she’s being shipped out along with the others, but their eyes meet, just before Natasha steps onto the Quinjet, and the look in them is unmistakable.

‘If you die out there, I’ll kill you’.

But Natasha doesn’t intend to die today – she knows that this is the most dangerous mission she’s ever had, because there’s freaking aliens and magic and god only knows what else going on down there, but she’s always been an optimist, isn’t willing to go down without a fight, and has to hope that her team will have her back.

It’s chaos on the ground, and Natasha has to use all of her training just to stay alive. She’s not sure Maria would approve of her plan to climb on the back of an alien spaceship in order to try and close the portal, but hey, at least it gets away from the middle of the battle.

She has no idea how they all manage to survive (she supposes a lot of it is down to Tony’s quick thinking to redirect the missile, but there’s no way in hell she’s telling him that), but they do, and they close the portal, and the city is a ruin but they _won_.

She never thought this team would ever work, but they’d come together in the end, and Natasha thinks that if there’s ever another threat, she wouldn’t mind working with them again.

They’re all summoned to the Helicarrier to be assessed, and Natasha waits impatiently as she’s given a once-over by the medic – she has a few broken bones, but she knows it could’ve been a lot worse, and she’s definitely not got the worst injuries of the bunch.

She’s waiting for Clint to get the all-clear when Fury steps into the medbay. Maria is a few steps behind, her eyes tight with worry but it eases when she gets a look at Natasha, and Natasha wonders how no-one else notices the way her whole body seems to relax, before she realizes that no-one is paying them any attention.

“You tried to _nuke_ us?” Stark may be half-dead, but there’s a note of indignation in his voice as he turns to glare at Fury and Maria, and Natasha feels a spark of protectiveness ignite in her chest.

“It wasn’t us,” Fury sighs, and Natasha glances at Maria and wonders how she felt, seeing that missile launch and knowing she couldn’t do a thing about it. “It was the security council.”

“Some security council,” Natasha mutters, because she dreads to think how many millions of people would have died if they’d obliterated Manhattan. “They gonna be a problem?”

“We’ll deal with it,” Fury tells her, and Natasha thinks that’s code for ‘yes’. “Speaking of, aren’t you supposed to be preparing for your interrogation, Hill?”

“Yes, sir.” Maria gives Natasha one last look before turning on her heel, and Natasha only half-listens to whatever Fury says next – she’s too busy wondering how best to slip away from the others and into Maria’s room, because after the week she’s had, she wants to sink into Maria, wants to forget herself, for just a few hours, in soft touches and heated kisses, until they’re forced apart again.

***

Natasha wakes up alone in the dark, surrounded by rubble, and wonders what the hell just happened.

She climbs gingerly to her feet, taking stock of her injuries – she doesn’t think anything is broken, but she’s definitely going to be covered in bruises if she makes it through to see tomorrow. Her left ankle feels a little weak when she puts weight on it, but Natasha has always been good at pushing through pain, at compartmentalizing it until the mission is finished and she can tend to her wounds.

Luckily for her, she knows this facility like the back of her hand – even if it’s now completely obliterated, the structure of the underground tunnels seems to remain the same – and she starts to stumble her way towards the surface, relieved, when she hears the crackle of other voices on the comms, that she isn’t the only one to have made it out of the wreckage alive.

She nearly trips over the infinity gauntlet, and she’s scooping it up into her arms when she hears a growl from behind her, and she swears under her breath when she catches a glimpse of the creature that made it.

It’s the same thing that attacked Wakanda, part of Thanos’ army, and Natasha doesn’t know how he’s there, how he’s managed to find them and travel into the future to try and stop them, but she does know that she has no interest in sticking around and trying to fend off those things alone.

She fires off shot after shot as she makes a run for it, adrenaline flooding through her veins – it’s been a long time since she’s been in the field, even longer still since she’s been fighting for her life, but she hasn’t forgotten her training, grits her teeth to ignore the pain in her ankle and races through the tunnels, the gauntlet tucked under her arm.

When she reaches the surface, she finds that the real battle is only just beginning.

But they have backup, and she watches, wide-eyed, as the portals open to bring back the people that they’d lost.

Selfishly, she hopes that Maria isn’t one of them – she knows that Maria can more than hold her own, but she doesn’t like the thought of her being out there in the chaos, hopes she’s somewhere safe and far away.

She’ll be worrying, though – she’ll have heard the explosion, and Natasha’s phone had been lost when she’d fallen, and she has no way to let Maria know that she’s okay.

As she joins the others on the battlefield, Natasha makes a vow that she _will_ be okay. She never goes into a fight believing she’ll lose, no matter the odds, no matter impossible a victory seems, because that was how she’d been trained.

The odds don’t seem too great here, but Natasha has never had so much to live for. She has no intention of breaking her promises to Maria and to Clint, and she charges into battle with the thought of both of them spurring her on.

She’s only too happy to pass the gauntlet onto someone else so she only has one thing to focus on – killing.

It’s what she does best, after all.

It’s may have been a while since Natasha’s been in a fight, but she’s never allowed herself to get rusty, trains every day, has taught herself to master several new weapons in the past five years – and she puts all of her training to good use, hacking down any of Thanos’ army that dare to get close.

Okoye nods to her when Natasha scythes down a creature that’s about to launch itself at her head, and she’s quick to return the favor, spearing another that gets a little too close to Natasha’s neck for comfort.

She sees flashes of the others in the fray – Rocket firing his favorite gun, Nebula reunited with her sister, Steve and Thor swapping weapons as they beat back their opponents. Natasha thinks it might all be over when the missiles start reigning down, but then she glances up and sees Carol sailing through the sky and thinks that maybe the tide might just be starting to turn in their favor.

The rest of the fight is a blur of blood and punches and gunpowder, and in the end, it’s Tony who deals the final blow.

But it’s not without a cost, and as Natasha watches Thanos’ army start to fade away, she hears a sob and turns to see Pepper falling to her knees beside the man that she loves, and it’s only then, when she sees the stones on his hand, that she realizes what he’s done.

She stands in the wreckage, blood, sweat and dirt sticking to her skin, and bows her head as she watches Pepper say goodbye, and says a silent goodbye of her own.

When she first met him, Natasha thought that Tony Stark was just a bored, egotistical playboy with too much money to burn, but in the past few years, Natasha has seen him grow, seen him fall in love, seen him become a father, and she knows that the world has just lost an incredible man.

They never would have been able to bring everyone back without him, and now Natasha will never get the opportunity to thank him.

They’ve won the war, but not without losses – Clint and Tony laid down their lives so that the rest of them could go on, left their children without a father and their wives without a husband, and Natasha knows they will all be mourning for the both of them for a long time to come.

***

Natasha likes it when she gets the opportunity to spend some time away from the Helicarrier. She likes the permanence of it, and when she’s asked if she wants to start working with Steve Rogers and be based in D.C., Natasha agrees.

After the Loki incident, Clint had taken a step back from active duty, and really, Natasha doesn’t blame him. They’d had a few good years together, and he has a wife and a family that he deserves to spend time with, so Natasha doesn’t begrudge him when he says he’s thinking about retiring.

It leaves her needing a new partner, and Steve isn’t a terrible choice. Sure, he’s practically a walking boy scout, but he’s nice enough, and she knows he’ll always have her back – even when he disagrees with her decisions.

Which, let’s face it, is a lot – Natasha is a spy by nature, whereas Steve is a soldier, and it means she’s much more unscrupulous, but that’s why Fury trusts her to get the job done.

Another advantage of being based in the Triskelion is Maria’s close proximity. She’s been based there since the battle of New York, and Natasha doesn’t know if she’d had a hand in bringing Natasha along with her, but Natasha doesn’t really care.

Officially, they both have apartments in the city, but unofficially, they’ve been living together for months. It’s a step Natasha never expected to take, but she likes coming home after a long mission to find Maria frowning down at a pot over the stove, likes slipping under the covers when it’s late at night and finding Maria’s warm embrace.

Natasha keeps expecting there to come a moment where Maria realizes that Natasha isn’t what she wants, isn’t what she thought she would be, and _she_ expects there to come a moment where she’ll let her fear and her insecurities ruin it all, but that day is yet to come.

And things aren’t perfect – they fight, and sometimes it gets ugly, and with their line of work they still don’t get to spend that much time together, even when they’re living in the same space – but they _work_ together, and Natasha has no idea how she’s managed to find someone who fits into her so well, almost by accident, but she’s glad that SHIELD had brought them together.

She’s with Maria when Fury codes on the table, and it kills her, that she can’t reach out and comfort her, that she can’t swipe away the tears that she’s trying so hard not to let fall. Nick Fury is a formidable man, and the effect he’s had on all of his agents is paramount, and Natasha can barely believe her eyes as she watches his life slip away before her very eyes.

(Of course, she finds out later that it was an act from _both_ of them, and even though it stings she knows that Maria was just following orders, and she can’t exactly argue with the results).

She knows Rogers is her best bet at finding out what happened to Fury, and what the hell is going on at SHIELD, so she sticks by him – which, of course almost gets her killed, not once, but _twice_. It’s the first time the same person has managed to shoot her twice – usually, the first try gets them killed, and the Winter Soldier is the only one that’s ever been able to get away.

The bullet passes straight through her shoulder but it hurts like a bitch, and Natasha has never been as relieved to see Maria’s face as she is in the back of that truck. She’s gorgeous, even with helmet hair, and Natasha thinks that if she loses anymore blood she’s probably going to end up saying that aloud.

“You just can’t keep yourself out of trouble, can you?” Maria says, when they manage to snatch a brief moment alone, drawing Natasha back into a dark corner in-case any prying eyes are lurking nearby, and she pulls aside Natasha’s jacket to get a look at the doctor’s handiwork.

“What would be the fun in that?” Natasha leans back against the wall and tries not to react to feeling Maria’s hands on her skin. “It’s fine,” she murmurs, watching the worry bloom in Maria’s eyes. “Just a scratch.”

“No, it’s not.” Maria’s hands drop to Natasha’s hips. “I miss the days when you were undercover and not constantly putting your life in danger.”

“On days like this, I miss it, too.” She’s exhausted, but she knows the real fight is just beginning. “Oh, and speaking of undercover – Steve and I kissed.”

“You did _what_?” Maria’s eyes spark, and Natasha’s stomach flips at the possessive way she digs her hands into Natasha’s hips.

“It was so Rumlow wouldn’t see us – he was adorably flustered and I’ve been teasing him about it ever since. Please don’t kill him.”

“What about maiming?”

“You know you’re the only one I want to be with.”

“First Stark,” Maria continues like Natasha hadn’t even spoken, “now Rogers, who’s next? Banner? Thor? I’m going to - ”

Natasha cuts her off with a kiss, sliding her tongue into Maria’s mouth when she gasps, and she slips her fingers under Maria’s tactical belt so that she can pull her closer, letting Maria press her flush against the wall.

“Well, I hope you didn’t kiss Rogers like that,” Maria says when they part, and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“Nah, I used a lot more tongue.”

Maria glares, and Natasha laughs at the look on her face, leans up on her toes to kiss her again, and she only pulls away when she hears footsteps nearby, knowing that it’s time for them to get back to work.

Infiltrating SHIELD has the potential to be a suicide mission, but somehow, they pull it off – they stop HYDRA, but SHIELD falls, and Natasha wishes there had been another way.

SHIELD has been her life for so long, and Natasha feels empty, knowing it doesn’t exist anymore. She knows Maria must be feeling even worse – SHIELD had been her life, she’s dedicated herself to that organization, to climbing the ranks to become a leader, and now, in the blink of eye, it’s gone, and even worse, it’s been tainted from the start, an insidious enemy growing from within, and Natasha wonders how many of the agents Maria’s worked with over the past ten years had actually been playing for the other team.

After the battle, Natasha returns to their apartment and finds Maria sitting in the dark, a glass in her hand and a bottle of scotch, half-empty, sitting on the table beside her.

“Am I going to have to cut you off?” Natasha asks, shrugging out of her coat and padding towards the other woman. She leans over the back of Maria’s chair, wrapping her arms around her and pressing their cheeks together, and she can smell the scotch on Maria’s breath, her eyes dark and haunted, and Natasha knows this is going to be a bad night for them both. “Talk to me,” she pleads, when Maria stays silent, her gaze unfocused as she looks out of the window towards the city skyline, the Triskelion noticeably absent, fires still burning in some of the wreckage.

“I can’t believe it’s gone.” Maria’s voice is quiet, solemn, and Natasha squeezes her tightly before shifting to drop into the chair beside her, taking a swig of scotch straight from the bottle. It’s not as nice as vodka, but it’ll do – she could sure as hell use a drink after the past few days.

“I know.” Natasha doesn’t really know what the future holds for them, now – for so long, SHIELD has been her one constant (well, that and Maria, and Natasha doesn’t know how they’re going to navigate without a job keeping them close to the others orbit), and she doesn’t know who she is without a mission, without a cover, without someone giving her orders.

“I don’t know who I am without SHIELD.”

“You’re Maria Hill.” Natasha hates the lost look on Maria’s face, would do anything to soothe all her pain away. “You’re smart and you’re strong and you’re an excellent marksman and an even better leader. You’re a pain in the ass - ”

“No, that’s _you_ ,” Maria interrupts, “little miss how can I get myself killed today – Fury told me you electrocuted yourself.”

“I was _fine_ ,” Natasha huffs, “and we’re getting off-topic. You’re Maria Hill, and nothing about you has changed just because you’re not deputy director anymore.”

“But how could I not know about HYDRA? How did I not _see_ it?”

“You’re not the only one.” Natasha is just as annoyed, if not more so – she prides herself on reading other people, on being an excellent spy, but at this, she’s failed miserably. “None of us saw it coming, and there’s no point blaming ourselves now. We can’t undo the past – we just have to move on.”

“But what does that even look like? Where do we go from here?”

“I don’t know.” Natasha has no idea what the future holds, knows only that it will be very different to what she’s used to, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. Maybe this is her chance to truly start anew, to strike out on her own, to not be tied to a shadowy organization that never gave her all the details. “But I _do_ know that whatever happens, we’ll get through it. Together.”

And they do.

Maria takes a job at Stark Industries (on the condition that it will be Pepper she reports to, and not Tony) and Natasha throws herself into finding any remaining members of HYDRA with the other Avengers.

It means they work in the same building – though Maria keeps her New York apartment, and it’s there they spend most of their time, because Tony is nosy and Natasha is sure if Maria spent the night in Natasha’s apartment in the Avengers Tower, the whole team would know about their relationship by the next morning.

It’s nice, though – the Avengers start to become like her family, and she and Maria still get to spend time together, and really, it turns out even better than either of them could have ever imagined.

***

In the aftermath of the battle, they pull together to tend to the wounded, none of them willing to lose anyone else.

With the adrenaline starting to ebb away, Natasha takes stock of her own injuries – her ankle is screaming at her to stop bearing weight on it, she’s pretty sure her left shoulder is dislocated, and there’s a nasty gash on both her forearm and stomach that definitely need cleaning and probably stitching.

They aren’t exactly overflowing with medicinal supplies, what with the facility lying, destroyed, in a ditch behind them, but Dr Strange’s ability to portal comes in handy, as do his surgical skills, and Natasha helps him set up a triage area for those who need it before Steve practically wrestles her to the ground and tells her she needs to look after herself.

She’s just finished stitching up her stomach when she hears the sound of a Quinjet flying overhead. It lands a few meters away from the wounded, and when the ramp lowers Natasha sees Fury along with a several other former SHIELD personnel, laden with more medical equipment.

The first person off the jet, though, is Maria.

Her face is tight with worry, her mouth pressed into a thin line as she rushes onto the ground, her eyes scanning across faces, looking for Natasha. For one long moment, Natasha can’t move, rendered breathless by the sight of her – it’s been five years since she’d seen that face, and as optimistic as she’d always tried to be, she’d sometimes doubted that she’d ever get to see it again.

Maria is beautiful, even when her face is pale, even when there’s panic in her eyes, and when her eyes lock with Natasha’s, she looks so relieved that she falters, nearly stumbles before she rights herself and practically runs towards her.

Natasha tries to stand, to meet her halfway, but her ankle buckles, and she’s on her knees in the dirt when Maria reaches her, flinging herself at Natasha so hard that she nearly sends them both toppling backwards.

She wraps her arms around Natasha’s back, and Natasha feels Maria’s tears against the side of her neck – she’s never seen Maria cry, not really, truly, cry, and Maria has never seen _her_ cry, but Natasha knows she is, presses her face into the shoulder of Maria’s jacket, breathing her in.

She wraps her arms around Maria’s back, even as her shoulder screams in protest, and when Maria pulls back to cup Natasha’s face in her hands, Natasha surges forward to kiss her, uncaring that they’re surrounded by other people, that she’s filthy, probably tastes like sweat and blood and death, but Maria kisses her back with desperation, her hands in Natasha’s hair, the salt of both of their tears on their lips.

“When I heard that explosion…” Maria trails off, her forehead pressed against Natasha, her breath on Natasha’s lips. “I thought I’d lost you, even though I only just got you back.”

“I’m not that easy to kill,” Natasha says, her voice soft as she trails the fingers of her uninjured arm across Maria’s cheek, letting her other arm go limp at her side. “And besides, we always make it back to each other, remember?”

Maria kisses her again, and Natasha hisses when she curls her fingers around Natasha’s shoulder.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” Maria pulls away, eyes apologetic. “Where are you hurt?”

“Dislocated shoulder, sprained ankle, bruised ribs, and a few gashes,” Natasha lists. “Nothing too major.”

Maria purses her lips at Natasha’s assessment of what counts as _major_ , but she doesn’t say anything as she pushes Natasha’s shoulder back into its rightful place, Natasha biting down on her shirt to smother her cry of pain.

Maria eyes her stitches critically – they’re not the neatest, but Natasha’s never really cared if she’s left with a scar – before wrapping Natasha’s ankle tightly and finding her a crutch to allow her to move around while keeping her weight off of it.

Together, they help tend to the wounds of some of the others, the both of them with basic field medic training as mandated by SHIELD.

She’s grabbing some supplies from the Quinjet when she feels a flutter of wind, Carol landing in a crouch beside her.

“You really know how to make an entrance, don’t you?” Natasha says, turning towards her with a tired smile. “And how to really destroy spaceships.”

“Well, you know.” Carol lifts her shoulders in a shrug, and she barely looks like she’s exerted any effort, not a single scratch on her, and Natasha hardly thinks that’s fair. “Do what you’re good at, and all that.”

“And we didn’t even have to page you.”

“I’d tell you off not for giving me a heads up you got everyone back, but…” Carol gestures towards the destroyed Avengers facility. “I’m guessing you had your hands full.”

“Just a little.”

“Thank you.” Carol curls a hand around Natasha’s forearm and squeezes, her eyes filled with gratitude. “Thank you for doing what I couldn’t.”

“And thank you for saving our asses, yet again.” It’s Fury who says that, not Natasha, a fond smile on his mouth as he looks at Carol, and Natasha blinks in surprise as Carol draws him into a hug.

“I wish I could catch up,” Carol says when she steps back, “but if you don’t need me here anymore, there’s somewhere I really need to be.”

“Go get her,” Natasha murmurs, and there’s a knowing look in Fury’s eye as he nods, both of them watching Carol shoot back into the sky.

“Glad to see you made it through, Agent Romanoff. I hear you’ve been the woman in charge for the past few years.” Fury turns to look at her, his hands behind his back, as hard to read as ever, and Natasha is glad that some things, at least, haven’t changed. 

“Yes, sir – although I’m glad to have you back. I don’t know if leadership is for me.”

“Oh, I don’t know Romanoff. Your teammates might disagree.” With that, he turns on his heel and walks away, and Natasha blinks after him for one long moment before remembering herself, grabbing the bandages she’d been after and returning to the fray.

Natasha’s stitching up a cut on Bruce’s arm when he catches her eye and raises an eyebrow.

“So, you and Hill?” He asks, glancing towards where Maria is hugging a tearful Pepper.

“I’d think carefully about the fact that I’m holding a needle when you choose your next words.”

“I’m not saying anything!” Bruce says, holding his hands up and wincing when it must hurt. “And to think, I used to think I had a shot with you.”

“Yeah.” Natasha pats him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, but you never stood a chance.”

“You really love her, huh?”

Natasha finishes the last stich and turns towards Maria, who catches her eye and smiles – it’s a sad, tired smile, but she’s backlit by the faint rays of the rising sun, and Natasha thinks that she’s the most beautiful thing that she’s ever seen.

“More than anything else in the world.”

***

Tony’s party is a rare opportunity for Natasha to just _be_ , a breather from the chaos her life has evolved into ever since she’d become part of the Avengers.

Lately, they haven’t spent much time together unless they were fighting, and Natasha finds herself enjoying the prospect of a night of drinking and relaxing with the people that she’s quickly coming to think of as family.

Maria also has an invite, courtesy of Pepper, and Natasha dresses accordingly – the dress displays ample cleavage, and sure enough, when she waltzes into the room (fashionably late) and makes eye contact with Maria, she smirks as she watches the other woman choke on a mouthful of her drink.

Maria looks good, too – Natasha rarely sees her wearing a dress, and her eyes keep falling to those magnificent legs, wishing they were wrapped around her head.

But they’re being discrete, because Natasha’s face is well-known, now, and anyone close to her becomes a target. Clint is still the only one of her new friends who’s observant enough to realize that Natasha is seeing someone, and both Natasha and Maria are happy to keep it that way – even _if_ they both get annoyed by the increasingly common media headlines suggesting Natasha is sleeping with several of her teammates.

She’s been accused of sleeping with Tony, Steve, Clint _and_ Bruce, and she thinks it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to link her with Thor, too.

She stands behind the bar and wonders if she should sidle up to his side and pose for the cameras just so that she can achieve the full set, but decides to behave herself instead, trying and failing to keep her gaze from wandering to Maria as she laughs at something Rhodey whispers into her ear.

Bruce tries to flirt with her, which is awkward, but Natasha doesn’t want to crush the guy, knows he’ll never make a move anyway so flirts a little harmlessly back before she disappears up the stairs with a glass of vodka.

She needs a moment to herself – she likes being around the others, but she has a social limit that’s reached relatively quickly – and she slinks down familiar hallways until she’s picking the lock of an office door a few floors up.

“I could have you arrested for trespassing,” Maria says when she walks through the door a few minutes later, and Natasha blinks innocently up at her from where she’s perched on-top of Maria’s desk. “There’s a lot of sensitive information in this office.”

“Oh yeah? You gonna handcuff me?”

“Don’t tempt me.” Maria clicks the lock shut behind her before she’s taking quick steps over to Natasha, stepping between her legs, her eyes running along the neckline of Natasha’s dress and her tongue wetting her bottom lip. “We’ll have to be quick, otherwise people will wonder where we’ve gone.”

“Rhodey, you mean?” Natasha teases – she’s seen the way he looks at Maria, and also Maria’s completely obliviousness towards his advances.

“Like Banner hasn’t been all over you all night?” Maria counters, her hands settling on Natasha’s waist. “I want to rip his eyes out.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Natasha laughs, circling her arms around Maria’s neck as she wraps her legs around her hips. “You know you’re the only one I’m trying to impress with this dress.”

“Trying to _kill_ more like,” Maria groans. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”

“Show me,” Natasha says, her voice rough in Maria’s ear.

Maria is only too happy to comply – she kisses Natasha, hot and hungry, and her lipstick and her hair is going to be ruined by the time they done but Natasha can’t find it within herself to care. Maria teases her breasts through the material of her dress, and then she presses Natasha back against the desk, and she’s probably crushing some of those important files that Maria mentioned earlier, but Maria doesn’t seem to mind as she hikes Natasha’s dress up over her hips.

“Fuck, Natasha,” she says when she finds out that Natasha isn’t wearing any underwear, and then she’s ducking her head and dragging her tongue along the length of Natasha’s sex, and Natasha fists her hands in Maria’s hair and holds her close, doesn’t let her go until her thighs are shaking and Maria’s pushed her over the edge three times.

Maria leans back and swipes a hand over the back of her mouth, and Natasha watches her through hooded eyes, manages to force herself upright and pull Maria close to kiss the taste of herself from Maria’s lips, working a hand between their bodies to slide a hand between Maria’s thighs.

She’s soaked, wraps her arms around Natasha’s neck and spreads her legs, and she bites at Natasha’s bottom lip when she slips three fingers into wet heat. If it stretches, Maria doesn’t complain, braces one hand on the desk beside Natasha’s hips so she can rock her against her, and when Natasha lets her thumb graze Maria’s clit, she swears into Natasha’s neck, panting against her skin.

When she comes, she bites down on Natasha’s shoulder, knowing that the dress will cover it if she leaves a mark, and Natasha presses soft kisses to Maria’s cheek and neck as she coaxes her through the aftershocks.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to walk out of here,” Maria says, her breathing ragged, and she groans when she watches Natasha slip her fingers into her mouth, licking them clean.

“I’m sure you’ll manage,” Natasha says, smirking as she pulls her dress back down over her hips. “Where’s the nearest bathroom?”

They both need to clean up, because Natasha knows if she waltzes back downstairs with her lipstick smudged, her hair tousled and her dress wrinkled, there’s going to be no doubt about what she snuck off to do.

“Just down the hall.”

Natasha steals one last kiss for Maria before hopping off her desk, and she makes sure she sways her hips as she walks towards the door, knowing that Maria’s eyes will be fixed on her ass.

She fixes her hair and her makeup and slips back down to the party, knowing Maria will follow her soon enough, and heads back towards the bar for another drink.

“You are unbelievable,” Clint says as he sidles up to the bar, setting his elbows on it as he leans towards her, shaking his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, so you _didn’t_ just sneak off for a quickie?” He asks, an eyebrow raised, and Natasha looks at him innocently over the rim of her glass.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she repeats, and she refills his glass for him when he passes it over.

“Then why’s your dress undone?”

“It’s not.” She’d checked that everything was in its rightful place before she’d left the bathroom. “And anyway, I just lifted it up instead of taking it off.”

“Tasha!” He groans and looks at her with disgust, and she laughs at the look on his face before downing the last of her drink, refilling it and crossing to the other side of the bar.

“Don’t want details, don’t ask if I’ve been for a quickie,” she scolds him, and she thinks maybe she’s spoken a little too loudly when she sees Steve choke on his drink a little way down the bar.

Oops.

She spends the rest of the night close to Clint’s side, and when the party winds down leaving just a handful of them behind, Natasha is glad that Maria is one of the ones who stays. Bruce tries to involve her in conversation, and Natasha tries to listen, she _does_ , but she keeps getting distracted by Maria playing cards with the others, by the tiny frown of concentration on her face, a leather jacket she’d stolen from Natasha long ago draped over her shoulders.

And then it all goes to hell, because of course they can’t just have _one_ night off.

Natasha loses sight of Maria in the chaos, but she knows that she can more than hold her own. She can’t wait to tell her about Bruce’s head ending up in her tits – she’s _definitely_ going to rip his eyes out for that – and she concentrates on stopping him from Hulking out in the ensuing firefight.

When all is done, and they’re standing in the wreckage, Natasha’s eyes meet Maria’s from across the room. They’ve become good at silent communication, over the years, and she asks ‘are you okay?’ and is relieved when she nods.

She’s not unscathed, has to pick shards of glass out of her feet, but Natasha knows that she’s dealt with more worse on the past, and tries not to gravitate towards her, to press her lips against Maria’s skin and whisper ‘thank god you’re alive’.

It seems there’s another battle for them to fight, another fire to put out, and Natasha should have figured that they wouldn’t be able to just have one night off to be themselves. She and Maria go their separate ways, their skills in vastly different areas, but before she goes, Maria catches Natasha’s gaze.

‘Be safe’ she says, without having to say a word at all. ‘Come back to me’.

‘I will’.

***

Before Natasha can truly begin to relax, before she allows herself to fall into Maria’s arms and never let her go, there is something she needs to do.

Maria offers to come with her, and while it’s torture, to leave Maria when she’s only just gotten her back, Natasha knows that this is something that she needs to do alone, so she sends Maria up to her parents in Chicago while Natasha takes a Quinjet to Missouri.

Laura rushes out to meet it, and Natasha swallows thickly at the look of hope that blossoms in her eyes only to watch it wither and die whenever Natasha is the one who steps onto the grass, and not her husband.

Laura reaches her, and Natasha doesn’t even need to say anything – her face says it all, and Natasha catches her as Laura falls in her arms, lets her sob into her shoulder, wraps her arms around her and whispers that she’s sorry, she’s so, so sorry, and breaks down completely when the kids follow their mother out, tears sliding down their cheeks.

Natasha manages to bundle them back inside the homestead, and she makes Laura some tea, guilt churning around in her stomach as she looks at the photographs plastering the walls.

“I’ve distracted them with a movie,” Laura says as she steps into the kitchen, shutting the door quietly behind her. “They should be okay for a little while.” Her eyes are haunted as she drops into a seat at the kitchen table, and Natasha is quick to press a mug into her shaking hands. “What happened?”

Natasha tells her, tears in her eyes, gaze fixed on the table because she can’t handle looking Laura in the eye, knowing that she’s the reason why her husband isn’t coming home. “I’m so sorry, Laura,” she finishes, running a hand across her face. “It should’ve been me.”

“Natasha, you and I both knew how stubborn he was.” Laura’s hand curls around the back of Natasha’s, and when Natasha glances up, Laura isn’t looking at her with contempt, like Natasha feared. “There was no way he was ever going to let you jump.”

“I should’ve tried harder to stop him.”

“You did everything you could,” Laura says, and Natasha doesn’t know what she’s done to deserve her kindness. “Natasha, he wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up over this. We had a good few years together – longer than I ever thought we’d have, considering he wasn’t exactly in the safest line of work.”

“He said the exact same thing to me.”

“We’ll be okay,” Laura tells her, and Natasha wonders how many times she’s prepared herself for the worst, how many times she’s lain awake at night, fearing that Clint would never make it home, and Natasha hates that she’s the one who’s had to break the bad news. “Promise me you’ll still visit?”

“Of course.” Natasha squeezes Laura’s hand, offended that she even has to ask – Clint may have been the one who brought her here, but Natasha had fallen in love with the whole family, loved the weeks she’d used to get to spend here, pretending she was normal. “You’ll be sick of me.”

“I doubt that very much.”

Natasha stays for a few days, helping out with the kids, playing with them when Laura needs a minute to herself, and, true to her word, she takes Cooper and Lila to the range out back and dusts off her seldom-used archery skills.

She’s rusty, and both of the kids are better than her, much to their glee, but it’s the first time that she’s seen them smile since they found out their Dad was gone, so Natasha takes it as a victory, anyway.

She leaves with the promise to come back soon, and she returns the Quinjet to Fury before she makes her way to Manhattan.

Natasha hadn’t set foot in Maria’s apartment since she’d collected her belongings, but she’d made sure it stayed empty, always suspecting that Maria would want it back, one day.

It’s late, and Natasha is silent as she slips through the front door, kicking off her boots before she pads down the hall to Maria’s bedroom.

She’s asleep, her hair a tousled mess, face turned towards Natasha’s side of the bed. Natasha is displeased by the fact that she’s wearing pajamas, but she supposes that Maria didn’t know when Natasha would be home, so she’ll let it slide, just this once.

She sheds her clothes as she moves towards the bed, and Maria tenses when Natasha slides beneath the covers, before she realizes who it is and reaches for her, Natasha rolling over to face her and finding Maria blinking sleepily at her.

“You’re back.”

“Always so observant,” Natasha says, voice teasing, and Maria swats half-heartedly at her shoulder. “Go back to sleep, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” Maria’s eyes open a little wider, and she catches a strand of Natasha’s hair between her fingers and toys with it gently. “I’m glad you didn’t stay blonde.” Natasha likes Maria like this, when she’s sleepy and unguarded, when she’ll let slip whatever is on her mind.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm.” Maria tucks the hair behind Natasha’s ear and trails her fingertips over Natasha’s cheek and down the slope of her neck, grinning when she shivers – but really, Natasha hasn’t been touched in five years, so can you really blame her? “How’s your ankle?”

“It’s fine.” SHIELD tech has many advantages, and quick healing is one of them. “I’ll be back to running around putting out fires in no time.”

“Don’t pretend that that’s not something you love,” Maria accuses, and Natasha burrows further into Maria’s arms, pressing a kiss to the tip of her nose.

“I don’t know,” Natasha murmurs, keeping her voice light. “Maybe I’m getting to old for that. Maybe it’s time to retire.”

“You’re not old,” Maria says, fingers tickling Natasha’s hip. “Although wait.” Maria pauses, eyebrows creasing into a frown. “Are you older than me now?”

“I guess technically I am,” Natasha says, laughing at the expression on Maria’s face. “Does that make me a cougar? Going after a younger woman?”

“Hardly.” Maria swats at her again, but Natasha merely catches her wrist and presses a kiss to the underside of it. “You really want to retire?”

“I don’t know.” Natasha shrugs, meeting Maria’s gaze and losing herself in pools of blue. “Maybe not completely, but… I wouldn’t mind taking a step back. If the past few years have taught me anything, it’s that there’s more to life than the next mission.”

“Natasha Romanoff, what _has_ gotten into you?” Maria teases, but she turns more serious when she notices the look on Natasha’s face. “It was a hard five years, huh?”

“You have no idea.” Natasha’s eyes turn dark, and Maria rubs a hand across the small of Natasha’s back. “I never gave up, but I still… I still didn’t know if I was ever going to get to see you again.”

She still struggles to believe that Maria is back – this is the first night they’ll have spent together in five years, and Natasha already knows that she isn’t going to get a wink of sleep, that she’ll lie awake, in the darkness, watching Maria and reaching out to touch her every so often just to try and reassure herself that she’s real, and not just part of another dream.

“I’m here,” Maria says, reading Natasha’s mind – she’s gotten annoyingly good at it, over the years. “And I’m not planning on going anywhere anytime soon.”

“What was it like for you?” Natasha asks, tracing her fingers down Maria’s sternum. “You know, dying and all.”

“Slowly turning into dust wasn’t how I imagined to go,” Maria murmurs, and she strokes a hand down Natasha’s spine when she stiffens, imagining Maria being blown away by the wind. “But… it didn’t hurt. It was just… one minute I existed, and the next I didn’t. And then I came back, and it was like no time had passed at all. But for you…”

“It’s been five long years.”

“You really waited for me, all that time?” There’s something vulnerable in Maria’s eyes, and Natasha leans closer to brush their lips together, sighing at the feeling of having Maria pressed up against her.

“Of course I did.” Natasha breathes the words against Maria’s lips. “I’d have waited an eternity for you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Natasha kisses her again, tangling one hand in Maria’s hair and settling the other at her hip, urging Maria to climb on-top of her. “You’re wearing too many clothes,” Natasha decides, once Maria’s straddling her hips, wants – no, _needs_ – to feel the heat of her skin.

“Well, I didn’t know I was going to have company.” Maria takes the hint, though, quickly tugging her shirt over her head and wiggling out of her shorts, and Natasha sighs happily when Maria settles back against her, completely bare. “Do you have anything to do tomorrow?”

“No.” Natasha frowns up at Maria, hands already skating up her sides to cup her breasts. “Why?”

“Just wondering how late I can keep you up,” Maria says, her voice low in Natasha’s ear before she’s pressing biting kisses to Natasha’s neck.

“As late as you want,” Natasha decides, because as long as Maria keeps kissing her like that, Natasha will agree to anything.

“Reckon we can beat our record?”

“I think we should try.”

***

After they defeat Ultron, Natasha moves into the new Avengers facility, to train the new recruits along with Steve.

She likes it – it’s different from what she’s used to, more responsibility, and she finds that she kind of likes giving orders instead of taking them.

She grows particularly close with Wanda Maximoff – Natasha sees a lot of her younger self in the other woman, who has lost too much too young, and she’s only too happy to take her under her wing, is flooded with pride whenever she does particularly well.

(She knows she shouldn’t have favorites, but she knows that Steve favors Sam, and so _what_ if they start making bets about which of their trainees will fare better in certain training situations? As long as no-one else finds out about it, then it’s _fine_ ).

Maria moves in to the facility, too, helps out with training and oversees world security, finds them missions to go on when there’s a worthy cause or when they’re all getting a bit restless from being cooped up inside for too long.

It’s not as private as Maria’s New York apartment – though she still keeps some of her things there, and on the rare occasions they both get some time off, that’s where they spend it – but they’re still together, and that’s what matters most to them both.

The Avengers have felt like her family for a while, now, but Natasha’s never felt more like she belongs than she does at that facility. She’d lived with the others for a few months in the Avengers Tower, but they rarely spent any time together, not like they do now – now they train together, they relax together, sometimes they eat together, and a couple of times a month they try and have a night where they just sit and watch a movie or play games where they get ridiculously competitive (there’s a leaderboard and everything).

Natasha’s spent so long solitary or alone, and when she’d agreed to move in with the others, there was a part of her that had wondered if it was a step too far, if she was going to hate it and bail after a few weeks, but now she thinks it might be one of the best things she’s ever done.

Maria doesn’t spend as much time with the team as Natasha would like, but sometimes they persuade her to join them, and she never misses a games night – she’s current top of the leaderboard, and absolutely nothing will stop her from trying to defend her crown.

On one such night, Natasha pads into the kitchen with her hair damp from the shower she’d taken after she’d finished a sparring session with Wanda, to find several boxes of pizza on the table, and the smell of chocolate in the air, Maria standing behind the counter with an apron wrapped around her waist.

“What smells so amazing?” Natasha asks, rounding the counter so she can press Maria back against it.

“You’re going to get flour all over yourself,” Maria protests, settling her hands at Natasha’s hips, but she just shrugs and presses closer, not caring if she gets a little dirty. “And I made some cookies, I watched some of your training session and it looked like you could use the calories.”

“Agent Hill, were you spying on me?”

“Not spying, just… assessing my fellow agents.”

“Oh yeah? And what conclusions did you draw?”

“Mm, I concluded that you are incredibly sexy when you’re only wearing a sports bra and leggings, dripping with sweat.” Maria ducks her head to kiss her, and Natasha sighs against her lips. “I miss sparring with you.”

“We stopped because we always ended up nearly fucking on the mat, remember?” Natasha quirks an eyebrow, smirking, and Maria hums in agreement. “We don’t want to scar any of the children.”

“They’re hardly children.”

“They sure act like it,” Natasha quips, remembering Sam and Steve spending a whole ten minutes arguing over who would win in a fight.

She knows they have a few minutes before the others come down to join them, and Natasha fully intends to utilize every second – she draws Maria back down into another kiss, untying her apron so she can slide her hands beneath Maria’s sweater, her hands resting on the warm skin at the small of her back.

They don’t flaunt the fact that they’re together, but they’re not exactly hiding it anymore, either. Natasha doesn’t see the point, not when she knows they’re safe within the walls of this facility, not when she trusts the other members of her team with her life, and she knows Maria feels the same.

All of her new teammates discovered their relationship separately. Sam was the first, seeing Natasha slip out of Maria’s room early one morning, half-dressed – he whistled ‘get it, Romanoff’ and then quickly ran away when Natasha started to chase after him. Rhodey had caught Maria sneaking out of _Natasha’s_ room, and apparently looked absolutely crestfallen. Vision had caught them kissing in the kitchen, and simply nodded to himself and walked away. Wanda had barged into Natasha’s room one day to ask her something, and found Maria shrugging back into her shirt, Natasha in the shower – _that_ was the day she’d learnt to always knock before entering someone’s bedroom.

And Steve… poor Steve seems to have a knack for catching them in the act. Natasha blames his damn near-silent footsteps, always sneaking up on them – the first time, it was only Natasha’s quick reflexes that had managed to spare him from seeing her hand down Maria’s pants, but the second, third _and_ fourth times Steve hadn’t been so lucky, and now he makes it a point to stomp around every hidden corner.

Naturally, it’s Steve who’s first into the kitchen, and Natasha laughs when he bangs into the doorway before rounding the corner, giving her enough time to push away from Maria and lean against the counter opposite.

“Hey guys.” Steve heads straight for the refrigerator and a bottle of beer, sliding another one along the counter to Natasha when she motions towards him. “Ready for games night?”

“That depends – you ready to get your ass kicked, Rogers?” Maria asks, and damn if Natasha doesn’t love when she gets competitive, that spark of fire in her eyes.

“This could be my week.”

“Oh, Steve.” Natasha pats his shoulder sympathetically. “It’s never your week.”

He might be the strongest out of all of them (well, except maybe Vision – they’ve never gone toe-to-toe, hell-for-leather in a sparring session, and Natasha isn’t a hundred percent sure who would land on-top), but games are not his forte, and he’s currently trailing at the bottom of the leaderboard.

“Well, maybe it’s time we played some different games,” he suggests, taking a swig of his beer, and Sam takes that as his cue to stroll into the room.

“Ooh, I’ve got a suggestion – naked Twister.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Natasha, who snorts as she folds her arms across her chest.

“Even though I’d wipe the floor with all of you, there is no way in hell.”

“Aw, come on, Nat,” Sam nudges her as he comes to stand beside her. “It’ll be fun.”

“No offence, Wilson, but seeing you naked isn’t really my idea of fun,” Natasha quips, ignoring his offended gasp and allowing herself to get distracted by the magnificent view of Maria’s ass in those black jeans as she bends to retrieve the cookies from the oven.

“Ooh, cookies.” Sam forgets all about Twister as he gets a glimpse of the tray Maria sets down on the counter, and pouts when she slaps his hand away as he reaches for one.

“These cookies are only for people who aren’t trying to get Natasha naked,” Maria tells him as she pulls off her apron, and Natasha watches her with an amused smile on her lips.

“So… does that include _you_?” Sam asks, grinning, and he yelps when Maria smacks him over the head with the apron.

“Nah, she can still have a cookie,” Natasha says, smirking, “she doesn’t have to try at all to get me naked.”

The reactions are instantaneous – Sam laughs, delighted, Steve groans, mortified, and Maria turns to smack _her_ over the head with the apron, but Natasha is quick to dance out of the way.

“I don’t even want to know what we just missed,” Wanda says as she walks through the doorway, Vision only half a step behind her – the two of them are quickly becoming inseparable, and Natasha thinks that she and Maria won’t be the only couple in the facility for long, doesn’t know whether she should intervene or just leave them be.

“Trust me,” Steve sighs, “you really don’t.”

When Rhodey joins them, they curl up on the huge couches in the rec room and demolish the pizzas and then the cookies (Maria lets Sam have one, when he turns to her with pleading eyes, and Natasha murmurs ‘softie’ under her breath that earns an elbow in the ribs), and then they play games until they’re all either too drunk or too tired (or both) to continue.

Natasha loves night like this, curling up into Maria’s side as she watches her bicker with Sam, Wanda half-asleep on Natasha’s other shoulder, Vision watching her with a fond smile, and Steve and Rhodey watching them all with a bemused look on their faces, like they’re wondering what they’re doing there at all.

Natasha never feels out of place, anymore – she feels like she really _belongs_ somewhere, for the first time, loves her little mismatched family. She feels like she’s carving out a space for herself in the world, in a way that she never thought she’d ever be capable of, and she loves that she gets to share it all with Maria, most of all.

***

It takes them both time to adjust to their new normal, and they spend the next couple of weeks in Maria’s apartment, making up for lost time.

Natasha feels like she’s in a waking dream, and she’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Maria to be whisked away, for her to end up alone again, and she wonders when she’ll stop thinking that it’s all going to come to an end.

It makes her clingy, something that she’s never been before, but Maria doesn’t seem to mind. She doesn’t say anything when she finds Natasha watching her sleep, just pulls her close and wraps her arms around her, knowing without Natasha having to ask that the pressure of Maria’s arm around her waist is the only thing that’ll lull her to sleep.

She doesn’t complain when Natasha is always finding a reason to touch her, whether it’s just her legs thrown over Maria’s lap when they’re sitting on the couch, or brushing her fingertips over Maria’s back when she passes her in the hallway, like she knows it’s just Natasha reassuring herself that Maria is really there.

She seems to know that it makes Natasha anxious whenever Maria isn’t in her eye line – Natasha does get better, with each day that passes, but Maria never snaps at her, never asks for space, leaves open the door whenever she moves into a different room.

Maria’s struggle is in trying to acclimatize – Natasha can’t imagine what it must be like, to have missed five years but have it feel like a blink of an eye – but she thinks that, if she could switch places, she’d rather be in Maria’s shoes, and not endured the years of pain without Maria by her side.

Maria spends her days trying to catch up on what she’s missed, and Natasha is only too happy to fill her in on what she’s been up to. She tells Maria about the aftermath of the Snap, about killing Thanos, about stepping up to lead the Avengers in their new world, and how they’d brought everyone back.

Maria holds her when she talks about fighting with Clint on the cliff, wipes away the tears that Natasha lets fall, and they reminisce about their favorite memories of their fallen friend over dinner with a bottle of wine.

There’s a part of her that still feels guilty, for being so happy when Clint is gone, but she knows he wouldn’t want her to be, would _want_ her to be happy, had given his life so that she and Maria could have this time together, and Natasha is determined to enjoy it.

Natasha keeps in touch with the others, checks how everyone is coping after the battle, that they’re all recovering from their wounds, all of them trying to figure out where they all fit in this new world. Maria needs to do that, too, and Natasha asks her about it one day, after she’s just gotten off the phone with Fury.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” Maria answers, and Natasha doesn’t complain when she shrugs out of her clothes and joins Natasha in the bath, sighing as she sinks into the warm water and settles on the opposite side of the tub, her feet on either side of Natasha’s hips. “Fury says there’s always a place for me by his side, but… maybe it’s time I took a step back, too.”

“You don’t have to. You love your job.”

“It’s not as important to me as you are.”

“If we both quit to spend all of our time together we wouldn’t last a month,” Natasha teases, because while she’s enjoyed the past few weeks, she knows that neither of them are the type of people who can be happy without something to keep them occupied.

“I guess you might have a point there,” Maria concedes, leaning her head back against the porcelain, and Natasha admires the long slope of her neck, a droplet of water running from the corner of her jaw and down to her collarbone, and she aches to trace the same path with her tongue. “But the constant travelling, the never really putting down roots… that was fine before, but I don’t know if I want to live like that forever. Especially when I don’t even know what SHIELD is going to look like in this new world.”

“We don’t know what anything will look like.” The Earth is starting to heal, but Natasha doesn’t know what shape it will take, how it will recover from its latest bombshell, the sudden return of half of the life they’d thought gone for good, but she knows it will be a better world than the one that came before it.

“Then it’s a good thing we don’t have to decide what we’re doing right now, isn’t it?” Maria says, and Natasha has to agree – she’s liked just _existing_ in the same space again, isn’t quite ready for it to end, doesn’t think she’s gotten her fill just yet.

“Come here,” Natasha murmurs, reaching for Maria and maneuvering them so that her back is pressed to Natasha’s front – the water sloshes over the side of the tub, but Natasha ignores Maria’s admonishment in favor of pressing her lips to the side of Maria’s neck, and she quickly snaps her jaw shut.

“Are you not bored of me yet?” Maria asks, letting out a sigh as she lets her head roll onto Natasha’s shoulder, tilting her neck to give Natasha’s lips more access.

“Five years,” Natasha growls, teeth nipping at Maria’s skin as her hands slide over soft skin to cup her breasts, fingers teasing her nipples as Maria arches into her touch. “Five years I’ve been waiting for this – you’re lucky I ever _stop_ touching you.”

“You don’t ever have to,” Maria promises, spreading her legs as Natasha slides a hand down her stomach and over damp curls, and they both moan as Natasha’s fingers slip over her wet heat.

“You feel so good,” Natasha murmurs into Maria’s ear, catching her earlobe between her teeth, fingers drawing lazy circles around Maria’s clit until her thighs start to tremble.

“Nat.” Maria’s voice is breathy, pleading, and Natasha nips at the skin just beneath her jaw. “I need to feel you.”

Natasha is only too happy to comply, sliding her free hand into Maria’s hair and turning her head so that she can kiss her as she presses two fingers inside. Maria moans into her mouth, tongue sliding against Natasha’s, her hands on Natasha’s thighs, nails leaving half-moon crescents in her skin

The angle is a little awkward, but Natasha is nothing if not determined, ignores her complaining wrist and instead drives her fingers deeper. Maria shifts, throwing one leg over the edge of the tub to spread herself wider, and she bites down on Natasha’s bottom lip when Natasha takes that as an invitation to press another finger inside on her next thrust.

Maria stops kissing her in favor of panting against the side of Natasha’s neck, and she reaches for Natasha’s hand, tangling their fingers together. Her other hand dips between her own legs, and Natasha swears in Russian as she watches Maria circle her clit until she’s clenching around Natasha’s fingers, breathing her name against Natasha’s skin.

“I love you,” Natasha says when she’s stopped shaking, lips pressed against Maria’s cheek as she slides her fingers free.

“I love you, too.” Maria’s eyes slip closed, her pulse thundering in her throat, and Natasha pokes her gently in the side.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Natasha warns, her voice low. “The water’s already getting cold.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you made my knees all weak.”

“It’s your fault for being so irresistible.” She manages to wrangle a grumbling Maria out of the tub, and she throws a towel at her head as she wraps herself up in her own.

Maria yanks it down as soon as they’re in the bedroom, looking much more awake as she all but pounces on Natasha, shoving her back against the bed and pinning her hands above her head.

***

All good things must come to an end, and what happens in Lagos is a step too far for many governments around the world.

“Do you think I should sign it?” Natasha asks, gesturing at the hefty document sitting on the desk in her room, her mind still not completely made up despite her earlier discussion with the others.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Maria says, perching next to Natasha on her bed.

“But what do you _think_ I should do?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Maria sighs, tilting her head back against the wall and looking as exhausted as Natasha feels – she hadn’t been in Lagos, but she’s been one of the ones attempting to clear up the mess they’d left behind. “The Accords just reek of a way for politicians to attempt to get back some semblance of control, spiraling because they’re not the most powerful people around anymore.”

“But if I don’t sign them…”

“Then you either retire, or you become a criminal.” Maria has read through the document several times, and Natasha trusts her assessment completely. “And I think we both know you wouldn’t retire.”

“Well, I _am_ used to being a criminal,” Natasha points out, and god, she could really use a drink but it’s still early and she’s supposed to be having a training session with Wanda in an hour. “But it would make seeing you almost impossible.”

“We could work it out.” Maria’s hand lands on her thigh and squeezes until Natasha turns to look at her. “I don’t want that to be your reason for signing it. I don’t want you to do something you don’t agree with because of me.”

Natasha thinks she falls in love with Maria all over again when she says that, doesn’t know what she did to deserve her.

In the end, she decides to sign them, and prays that she’s not making a huge mistake – it’s then, of course, that everything _truly_ goes to hell, and Natasha never expected to be siding with Tony over Steve, facing _off_ against Steve with the training wheels well and truly off, against half her whole _team_ as well as Clint, and it kills her that it’s had to come to this.

So, she lets Steve go, because she doesn’t see any other way to end this without serious casualties (and even then, it’s not soon enough, because no-one knows if Rhodey will ever be able to walk again).

It turns Tony against her, makes her signature on the Accords meaningless, and she knows that her days as a free woman are numbered, a clock counting down to the moment where she’ll be found and apprehended.

Not that Natasha has any intention of letting that happen.

She leaves Stark and makes a beeline for her bedroom, and isn’t surprised to find Maria sitting on her bed within.

“I’m so sorry.” She falls into Maria’s arms, wraps her arms around her neck as Maria’s slide around her waist and pull her close. “I tried, but I… I ruined everything.”

“You haven’t ruined anything.” Maria leans away only far enough to look Natasha in the eye, cupping her cheeks with both hands. “You’re fighting for what you believe in.”

“But this place… I love it here, I love what _we_ have here, and now I’ve thrown it away.” She knows there’s no way back for her, no way she can talk her way out of this – Ross will be out for blood, and Natasha is not built to be behind bars. “I finally felt like I belonged. Like I had a place in the world. I should’ve known that it wouldn’t last – I’m not meant to have a happy ending.”

“Hey.” Maria tilts her jaw up, forces Natasha to meet her gaze. “You’re always going to have a place in the world – you’re Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, one of the Avengers. That’s not going to change, no matter what people might try and write about you. And your story doesn’t end here – you can still have a happy ending.”

“Not without you.”

“You’re not losing me,” Maria insists, her hands fisting in the material of Natasha’s shirt. “You’re never going to lose me, Nat – we’re both spies, I think we can figure out a way to keep seeing each other.”

“But it won’t be the same.” Natasha hasn’t realized how complacent she’s become, living here, living with _Maria_ , until she’s faced with losing it for good.

“This is temporary,” Maria murmurs, and Natasha wishes she could share her certainty. “There’ll be another fire to put out, sooner rather than later, and they’ll come crawling back to you, asking for your help.”

“You think so?”

“I do. This is nothing but a bump in the road, Nat – we’ll make this work.” Maria kisses her, soft and sweet, and Natasha wishes she could deepen it, wishes she could press Maria back against the bed and feel Maria’s hands on her skin, but she’s already lingered too long, is losing any head start she might have with every second that ticks by. “You need to go,” Maria echoes her thoughts, but Natasha doesn’t know how to leave. “We’ll see each other again soon.”

“I love you.” Even though Natasha knows Maria already knew it, it’s the first time she’s ever said the words aloud, the first time she’s ever been brave enough, the first time she’s managed to force the words out, this time not letting them get stuck in the back of her throat.

Maria freezes against her, blinks up at Natasha, shocked, before a smile crosses her face and she kisses Natasha again. “I love you, too.”

Natasha already knew that, too, but hearing the words still makes her heart soar, fills her with warmth, and she knows she’ll be repeating them in her head in the hard days to come.

“Now go, Nat. Don’t let them catch you.” Maria hands her a bag, and Natasha smiles when she looks inside it and sees that Maria’s packed everything she could possibly need inside it – including a couple of new aliases.

“How long have you had these?” Natasha asks, glancing at one of the passports – it’s an excellent fake, and Natasha drops it back into the bag before slinging the strap over her shoulder.

“A while,” Maria says, with a wry smile. “I figured you’d get yourself in trouble sooner rather than later.”

“And you were right, as always.” Natasha leans in for one last kiss, but doesn’t let herself linger, doesn’t let herself look back as she hurries towards the door.

Downstairs, she grabs the keys for her favorite motorbike and puts her foot on the gas, tearing out of the garage like the devil himself is after her. It’s been a while since she’s been on the run, but Natasha knows it’ll be easy enough for her to fall back into old habits, knows that she’ll be fine, even if the pang of loneliness at the thought of endless months on her own is an entirely new feeling.

It’s only temporary, she tells herself, as she joins the freeway with no destination in mind.

It’s only temporary – she repeats it like a mantra, hopes that that’s enough to get her through, and she hears Maria’s voice in her head.

‘Come back to me’.

‘I will’.

***

It’s three weeks after the battle before they have a funeral for Tony Stark.

They travel to the funeral together, and Natasha tugs Maria over to Laura and the kids when she spies them hovering a little uncertainly away from the others.

“Auntie Nat!”

She’s quickly wrapped in a hug by all three kids, Maria letting go of her hand so that Natasha can lift a giggling Nate into her arms.

“Maria, it’s nice to see you again.” Laura draws Maria into a hug – she looks surprised, and returns it a little stiffly, and Natasha hides her laugh in Nate’s hair.

“And you. I’m so sorry about Clint. He was a good man.”

“He really was.” Laura’s smile is sad and watery, and Natasha shifts Nate onto her hip so that she can squeeze his Mom in a one-armed hug.

They’d decided, when Natasha was on the homestead, not to have a big funeral for him – there was no body to bury, but Natasha had fashioned a gravestone for him, and they’d had a small memorial, just the five of them, and Natasha had set the stone in Clint’s favorite spot, along with one of his old bows.

“I’m going to go and see how Pepper’s doing,” Maria decides, brushing her fingers across Natasha’s arm before she melts into the crowd, and Natasha is happy enough waiting with the Barton’s, catching up with Laura on what the kids have been doing the past few weeks.

“Hey, Nat.” Steve rests a hand on her elbow, and Natasha turns towards him – his smile is sad and tired, and she knows that losing Tony had hit him hard. “Haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Natasha knows that he, Bruce and Scott have been hard at work making sure that they have a working machine to enable them to return the stones, but Natasha had chosen not to get involved, knowing it was outside of her area of expertise. “I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Steve’s eyes, shining with mirth, flicker over to where Maria is standing with Pepper and Rhodey, and Natasha kicks him in the shin.

“Shut up.”

“You guys are good together,” he says, squeezing her arm. “I’m glad you got your happy ending.”

“You gonna get one for yourself?” She asks, because as much as he’d tried to pretend he was living a life, these past few years, he’d been by her side at the facility one too many late nights for her to really believe it.

“I’m working on it,” he says, with an enigmatic smile, and it isn’t until later that Natasha realizes what he means.

The funeral is a quiet, somber affair, and Natasha stands with her shoulder pressed against Maria’s, both of their heads bowed as they watch the float disappear into the lake.

The wake is livelier, because they all know that’s what Tony would have wanted – he’d want them all to get drunk and rowdy and share their favorite stories, and that’s exactly what they do.

Carol is one of the first to leave – she didn’t really know Tony, but Natasha is glad that she showed up, and she comes to say goodbye before she goes, resting a hand on Natasha’s elbow and pulling her away from a conversation with Sam.

“Let me guess – gotta get back to saving the universe?” Natasha asks when she turns to face her, and Carol grins back at her.

“Well, someone’s got to.”

“You find what you were looking for in Louisiana?”

“I did.” Carol’s eyes are brighter than Natasha has ever seen them, and she knows that Carol is probably thinking the same – they’ve yet to see each other happy, but Natasha hopes that those days are long behind them now. “I’m assuming your Maria is the one who’s glaring a hole into my skull?”

Natasha turns in the direction of Carol’s nod to find Maria watching them from across the room – Rhodey is talking to her, but Natasha is sure she’s not listening to a word he’s saying, is too busy watching Carol, her hand still on Natasha’s arm, with narrowed eyes.

“That would be her.”

“Maybe we can all grab a drink together when I’m next in your neck of the woods – I can tell her all about how mopey you were when she was gone.”

“She would love that,” Natasha says, her smile wry as she turns back towards the other woman. “Look after yourself, Danvers. It’s a crazy world out there.”

“You too, Romanoff.” She leaves with one last smile, and Natasha crosses the room to join Maria, leaning into her side when Maria’s arm slides around her waist.

“You didn’t tell me you and Captain Marvel were best buds,” Maria says, her voice quiet in Natasha’s ear, and Natasha tries not to laugh.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.”

“Oh, please.” Natasha tilts her head up to meet Maria’s gaze. “You’re totally jealous, but you don’t need to be. We worked together, that’s all. I’ve only ever had eyes for you.” She leans up to press a kiss to Maria’s cheek to illustrate her point, and Natasha knows that’s all she needed to hear.

Wanda joins their little group, and Natasha rests a hand on her shoulder, knows she’s been having a hard time, having lost Vision just before the Snap. “How are you holding up, kid?”

“I’m okay,” she says, but her eyes are watery and Natasha thinks it’ll be a long time before she can say that and actually mean it. “I just… I miss him, you know? I never really got the chance to say a proper goodbye.” 

“We could have a service for him,” Maria suggests, “with the old team. And we could have one for Clint, too. I know you and Laura already did a little something, but I think some of the others would like to say goodbye, too.”

“I’d like that,” Wanda says with a nod, and Natasha has to agree. “I don’t know where we could do it, though… he spent most of his time in the Avengers facility, and that’s all rubble now.”

“We’ll think of somewhere,” Natasha assures her, squeezing her shoulder, and she knows Wanda must be reeling from losing her home, too.

“Pepper’s talking about building a new facility with some of the money that Tony left behind.” Wanda is quick to change the subject, her pain still raw. “What do you think? We could start up the team again.”

“I… I haven’t decided what I want yet,” Natasha says, because honestly, she still has no idea, but she _did_ enjoy her time at the Avengers facility, did enjoy training up the new recruits, and she thinks that out of all of her options, it’s the one that makes the most sense – it’s where she’d felt most at home, although she thinks anywhere in the world would feel like that, as long as Maria’s by her side. “But I _do_ know who my top pick is for leader of the pack.”

Wanda frowns at her, confused, and Natasha waits for the other shoe to drop. “Wait, do you mean _me_?”

“Yeah, I do.” That’s something that Natasha _has_ thought about – Wanda has proved herself time and time again, is an excellent team player, and not to mention one of the most powerful members of their team, and Natasha has no doubt in her mind that she’s the best candidate for the job. “Only if you want it, though.”

“I… yeah. I think I’d like that.”

“Then we’ll talk about it.” Natasha is surprised when Wanda throws her arms around her neck, but she hugs her back tightly, wishing that she could take away some of her pain.

Later that day, Natasha is one of the ones who stands by while Steve goes back through time to return the stones. Just before he disappears, he catches Natasha’s eye and winks, and Natasha remembers his earlier words when he doesn’t return when Bruce expects him to, and thinks he isn’t coming back at all.

“You got your happy ending,” she says, after Sam has stepped away, holding the shield with a look of astonishment in his eyes, and she moves to sit beside him on the bench.

“Yeah, I did.” His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and it’s a bright, real smile, his eyes lighting up with happiness, and Natasha can’t even be mad at him for springing this on her, because she’s never seen him like this before.

“How am I supposed to do this without you?” She asks, because he’s been by her side for a long time, has been her partner in crime, and she hadn’t expected to lose him like this. “First Clint, then Tony, then you… Bruce is retired, and Thor is going off-world… I’m the only original one left.”

“You’ve never needed me, Nat,” he replies, but Natasha doesn’t think that’s true. “And you’re going to do just fine – you’ve trained up the others to be damn good replacements, and you’ve been a great leader these past few years.”

“Language,” Natasha teases, though his words bring tears to her eyes, and Steve’s laugh is loud.

“And I’m not going anywhere just yet. I’ve still got a few years left in me.”

“Yeah, but you’re hardly going to be going toe-to-toe with me on the training mat, are you?”

“Careful – I bet I could still kick your ass.”

“Not without breaking a hip, Grandpa.” She’s smiling in spite of herself, and Steve is, too. “You had a good life?”

“I had the best life,” he says, eyes wistful as he looks out over the edge of the cliff. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Natasha. I’m going to be just fine, and so are you.” He squeezes her shoulder, looking as wise as always, and Natasha leaves him with Bucky as she makes her way back inside the house.

She pauses in the doorway, eyes finding Maria – she’s sitting with an arm around Pepper’s shoulders, and Morgan is curled up in her lap, fast asleep, her head resting on Maria’s shoulder. She’s laughing at something Rhodey says, but she’s careful not to be too loud, not to jostle the sleeping girl on her knee.

Maria turns her head and catches Natasha’s gaze, blue eyes shining, her hair a little tousled from the wind outside, cheeks flushed from the several glasses of wine she’s had to drink over the last few years.

She’s the most beautiful thing that Natasha has ever seen, and as she picks her way through their friends to sit beside her, Natasha knows that she _will_ be fine, because she’s always going to have Maria to come back to.

***

Natasha’s only on her own for a few months before she reunites with Steve and Sam.

It’s a smaller family than she’s used to, but she’s grateful for them all the same, and they spend months together evading those that are searching for them, and helping people in need.

Natasha doesn’t see Maria as often as she’d like, but they do manage to snatch a few rare weekends together. It's an advantage of keeping their relationship relatively quiet – no-one suspects that former deputy head of SHIELD Maria Hill is sleeping with the Black Widow, sneaking away to meet with her a couple of times a month, and Natasha is glad that Maria had paid such good attention to her training, because she knows she’ll easily be able to shake a tail if anyone does try to follow her.

So it’s not ideal, but it’s not as terrible as Natasha feared it would be, and she was right – it’s only temporary, because soon enough, they get a call that Vision and Wanda are in danger, and the gang gets back together again.

The facility hasn’t changed, even though it’s been two years since Natasha has set foot inside it. She knows they can’t stay long, but she still finds the time to slip away, finds Maria in one of the labs downstairs, her face flooding with relief when she sees Natasha hovering in the doorway.

“I can’t believe you’re really here.” Maria says when she reaches her, drawing Natasha back down the hall and pulling her into an empty office. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” She runs her hands down Maria’s arms, wishes that her life wasn’t just racing from one battle to the next, wishes that she had a chance to just… stop, to just _be_ , to be able to stay in one place for longer than a few days, to wrap Maria in her arms and never have to let her go. “I… I don’t have long. We’re going to Wakanda, Steve thinks we might be able to find a way to get the stone out of Vision’s head.”

Maria’s face is pale with worry, and she’s holding on to Natasha’s hips tightly, like she’s trying to keep her in place, like she doesn’t want her to leave. “Nat, this is… this is the biggest thing we’ve ever faced.”

“I know.” Natasha has seen the destruction waged in New York, knows that that was just a taster – she’s heard from Bruce what Thanos is capable of, and knows something terrible is coming. “But I… I have to go. I have to fight.”

“I know you do.” Maria would never ask her to stay, even though Natasha knows she wants to. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

“Come here.” Natasha pulls Maria close, leans up on her toes to kiss her until they’re both breathless.

“How long do we have?”

“Not long enough,” Natasha sighs, because it’ll never be enough. “After this is all over, I’m going to come back and we’re going to get a hotel room and I’m not letting you get out of bed for a week.”

“Mm, sounds perfect.” Maria’s hands slide down to Natasha’s ass and squeeze. “Let me know when you’re on your way back and I’ll make a reservation.”

“I will,” Natasha promises, already looking forward to it, impatient for the battle to be over so she can be back in Maria’s arms once more.

They trade lazy kisses until Steve comes onto Natasha’s comms and asks if she’s ready to go, and Natasha pulls away with a heavy sigh.

“Call me when you land?” Maria asks, and Natasha nods, giving Maria one last, lingering kiss before she makes her way towards Steve and the others.

Wakanda is even more beautiful than Natasha could have ever imagined, and she feels privileged that she’s gotten the opportunity to see it. She tells Maria all about it when she calls her just after they land, and she wishes she could have the chance to explore the city but Thanos’ arrival puts an end to that idea.

She calls Maria again, when the spaceship darkens the sky, trepidation building in her stomach.

“It’s starting,” she says, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she starts to check and double-check all of her weapons. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to call again.”

“I’ve seen the ship.” Maria’s voice is tight with worry, and Natasha wishes she could say something to soothe her nerves, but she looks towards the sky and doesn’t know what she could possibly say that wouldn’t be a lie. “Natasha… please be careful out there.”

“I will. I’ve got a date to get back for, remember?” Natasha shoves her last gun into its holster and starts to move towards Steve, ready to make her way onto the battlefield. “I’m not gonna miss it.”

“You’d better not.”

“I love you.” Natasha needs to say it, and Maria needs to hear it, just in-case, and Natasha doesn’t want to hang up the phone but she knows she needs to soon.

“I love you, too.” Maria falls silent, and Natasha can hear the sound of her breathing in her ear, lets it ground her as she loses herself in the sea of Wakandans preparing for battle – she meets Steve’s gaze and knows that it’s time for her to go.

“I have to go, I’ll call you when I can.”

“Be safe out there,” Maria says, and her voice wavers. “You’d better come back to me.”

“I’m going to try my best,” Natasha promises, before she hangs up the phone.

It doesn’t occur to either of them that it might be Maria who doesn’t come back to _her_.

***

Over the next few months, as the world begins to heal, _they_ all begin to heal and move on.

True to her word, Pepper builds a _new_ new Avengers facility, not too far away from the site of the original. She asks Natasha and Maria for their input on the plans, and they end up with a building that is perfect for training and housing future members of the Avengers.

It’s there that Natasha chooses to set up base, at least for the time being. She slips back into her leadership role, but only until Wanda finds her feet and feels ready to take over, and she takes a step back from any kind of field work, finding that she doesn’t really miss the thrill of a fight or a battle, even if she does feel a little on edge watching the others on a mission through the grainy video footage that’s relayed to her computer screen in the command center.

The new facility feels a lot more homely than the old one had, during what’s now being referred to as ‘the Blip’, because she’s no longer alone. Wanda, Sam and Bucky are permanent residents, and Bruce can often be found down in the research labs, sometimes with Peter Parker in tow. Even Scott Lang drops in occasionally, though his daughter being across the country tends to limit his visits.

Rhodey also takes a step back from going into the field, but he’s happy to help out with training exercises, and while he’s not as good a partner as Steve, he’s a pretty good substitute. Steve himself likes to pop in occasionally, and sometimes Natasha goes to visit him in his apartment, too, because she worries about him getting lonely.

The Guardians may have returned to space along with Thor, but Rocket still likes to send Natasha the occasional email, and she makes sure she keeps in regular contact with Okoye and Carol, in-case anything happens out there in the universe that they need to team up on again.

Natasha keeps her promise to Clint and Laura, and visits the homestead whenever she can, or invites them to come to New York when she can’t manage to get away. Laura’s grief still sits heavy in her eyes, and Natasha knows it’s echoed in her own whenever she gets a glimpse of the bows and arrows in the weapons room, but she can think of Clint without crying, now, at least.

And as for Maria… she teams back up with Fury, but when she’s not out monitoring threats she’s based at the facility. Natasha’s a wreck the first time Maria has to leave – she checks her phone obsessively, convinced that something is going to go wrong, and it’s only Sam dragging her down to the training room so she can kick his ass that stops her from losing her mind completely.

It gets easier, after that first time, but Natasha still can’t shake the anxious feeling in her stomach whenever Maria is away. It’s eased, somewhat, by Maria’s nightly phone calls – she calls before she goes to bed, no matter where she is, no matter what the time difference – but nothing is as soothing as the feeling of having Maria back in her arms.

Maria’s longest mission to date has her traipsing across Europe for three weeks, and Natasha waits anxiously for her return. She spends the first two weeks on the homestead with Laura and the kids, and the last week cleaning up any messes that the others had kindly left for her after her extended absence.

The day that Maria gets back, Natasha decides to do something special, because they’ve both been busy getting up to speed with their new lives, and she thinks it’s time that they got to spend a whole weekend together without anything else getting in the way – Natasha has threatened both Sam and Wanda with unspeakable things if they interrupt them for any reason.

So, she makes the journey to Maria’s apartment and she grabs Maria’s favorite Chinese take-out and leaves it warming in the oven, leaves a bottle of red wine breathing on the kitchen counter, slips into a dress that she’s hoping will make Maria lose her mind, and waits for the click of Maria’s key in the lock.

She isn’t waiting long – she’s barely twenty minutes into the film she’d put on to pass the time by the time Maria walks through the door – and she stands up from the couch and smirks as she watches Maria’s eyes widen as she takes in Natasha’s dress, her eyes tracking over the plunging neckline and then down, biting her lip when she sees the slit that rises sinfully high on Natasha’s left thigh.

“Well, this is a nice surprise,” Maria says, letting her bag drop to the floor beside her and shrugging out of her jacket. “Although I do feel a little underdressed.” Maria steps towards her, one hand settling on Natasha’s hip and the fingers of her other hand tracing along the exposed skin of her thigh. “What’s the occasion?”

“I thought you deserved some off after how hard you’ve been working,” Natasha murmurs, leaning up on her toes to press their lips together, pouting when Maria doesn’t let her deepen it.

“I’ve just gotten off a plane and I don’t remember the last time I had a proper shower or brushed my teeth,” Maria explains, running her hands up and down Natasha’s sides. “Let me go freshen up? And then I’m all yours.”

“Want me to come with you?”

“I’d like that,” Maria says, hands finding Natasha’s ass. “But I don’t think I’ve shown you how much I appreciate this dress yet.” She brushes her lips over the corner of Natasha’s jaw, and Natasha sighs and tilts her head. “I’ll be right back,” Maria breathes against her skin, pressing a kiss against Natasha’s neck before stepping away.

“Tease,” Natasha calls after her, and Maria turns to throw Natasha a smirk over her shoulder before she disappears into their bedroom.

“Oh, no, that’s going to come later,” she promises, voice low and husky, the words making Natasha’s stomach twist and she thinks, as she hears the sound of the water running a few moments later, that _she’s_ the one that needs a shower – a cold one.

She knows Maria won’t be long, so she sets out the food on the kitchen counter and settles into one of the stools with a glass of wine as she waits. Maria soon joins her, and Natasha’s mouth goes dry when she gets a glimpse of her.

She’s wearing lingerie that Natasha has never seen before, the body of it black lace, sheer enough that she may as well be wearing nothing at all. The hem stops just above Maria’s hips, the panties she’s wearing a perfect match, and Natasha’s pretty sure she’s never going to be able to have a coherent thought ever again in her life, because her brain is just going to be filled with the image of Maria walking towards her dressed like _that_ forevermore.

“Well, now I feel overdressed,” Natasha says, amazed that she can form words at all as Maria hops into the stool next to her, and when she crosses her legs Natasha’s eyes can’t tear themselves away from her thighs.

“You dressed up for me, so I thought I should return the favor.”

“By killing me?” Natasha asks, and Maria smirks around the rim of her glass of wine.

“You’re not allowed to die – I have plans for you.”

“Oh yeah? Why don’t we get started on those plans right now?” Natasha suggests, leaning over to close the gap between them, but she’s stopped by Maria’s hand on her sternum.

“Food first,” she says, but her eyes are dark and she keeps glancing at Natasha’s lips, and Natasha thinks it won’t take much to get her to cave.

“Are you trying to torture me?” Natasha asks, and Maria keeps one hand on Natasha’s chest as she picks up some noodles with her chopsticks using the other.

“Always,” she says, with a smile, dropping her hand to rest it on Natasha’s thigh, instead. “But we should eat – you’re going to need the energy.”

Natasha grumbles, but she does as she’s told, and she doesn’t know if she ate too quickly or if Maria is being purposefully slow, but Maria still seems to have half a plate left by the time Natasha has polished off hers.

No matter – with both her hands free, it’s Natasha’s turn to torture Maria, now. She finishes the last of her wine before she stands up, moving behind Maria’s chair, and she moves Maria’s hair away from her neck so that she can press open-mouthed kisses against her skin, one hand cupping a breast, the lace rough beneath her fingertips, while the other teases at the inside of Maria’s thigh.

“Fuck, Natasha.” Maria’s sigh is breathy, her back arching into Natasha’s touch as her head lolls back against Natasha’s shoulder, and she abandons her chopsticks in favor of fisting a hand in Natasha’s hair, her legs spreading for Natasha’s searching fingers. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” Natasha replies in-between biting kisses, rolling a nipple between her fingers, Maria’s hips twitching as Natasha’s other hand settles between her thighs. “You’re so wet for me already.”

Maria whimpers in response to Natasha dragging two fingers over the damp patch of her underwear. She teases Maria’s clit through the lace until she’s trembling, and then she moves away – Maria opens her eyes to glare at Natasha, and she laughs as she moves to stand in-front of her.

“I want my mouth on you,” Natasha murmurs, and she pulls Maria upright only so that she can help her onto the kitchen counter, dragging her underwear down her toned legs. She lifts Maria’s leg over her shoulder before dragging her hips towards the edge of the counter and settling between her thighs.

She works Maria up with slow strokes of her tongue, Maria’s heel digging into her back and her hand tight in Natasha’s hair, and she breathes out Natasha’s name when she sucks at her clit, her hips rolling against Natasha’s mouth.

She’s so wet that Natasha slips two fingers inside easily, and she curls them as she circles Maria’s clit with her tongue, feels her thigh start to shake against her cheek and knows she’s close, presses her fingers deeper and then Maria is pulsing all around her, the fingers in Natasha’s hair making sure to keep her close.

Natasha works her through the aftershocks but doesn’t pull away, doesn’t stop until Maria’s come twice more and can’t take it anymore, her hands gently pushing Natasha away, hips still twitching as Natasha swipes the back of her hand over her mouth.

“Come here.” Maria pulls Natasha into a heated kiss, tasting herself on Natasha’s tongue as she wraps her arms around Natasha’s neck. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Natasha says into the crook of Maria’s neck, feeling her pulse beating a frantic rhythm beneath her lips.

“I think I’m ready to get you out of that dress now.”

“Oh yeah?” Natasha pulls back, and she smirks when Maria climbs off the counter and nearly falls, her knees still a little weak.

“Yeah, come on.” Maria takes Natasha’s hand and all but drags her down the hall to their bedroom, pushing Natasha down onto the bed once they’re inside. Maria pauses, standing in-between Natasha’s thighs, drinking her in, and Natasha does the same – Maria’s hair is a tousled mess, her cheeks tinged pink and a matching flush on her chest, her pupils blown so wide that they swallow up all of the blue.

She’s a vision, and Natasha almost pinches herself, because how is someone like her real? Natasha knows she’s the luckiest woman alive, because she’s the one who’s going to fall asleep in Maria’s arms tonight, she’s the one who’s going to wake up beside her in the morning, she’s the one who never intends to let this woman get away.

Later that night, with the sheets tangled up in their legs and sweat still cooling on their skin, Natasha turns to face Maria and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, and traces her fingers over the curve of her jaw.

“Are you going to watch me sleep again?” Maria asks, her eyes already closed. “Because you don’t need to, Nat. I’m not going anywhere.”

Natasha’s finally starting to let herself believe that, to believe in the promise that they keep making to each other – that no matter what, no matter how impossible the odds or how dire the situation, they’ll keep making it back to one another.

Forever.


End file.
